Cubans face shortage of toilet paper

McClatchy Newspapers

MIAMI — There’s good news and bad news in Cuba.

The bad news: There’s a shortage of toilet paper, and officials in Havana say it will not ease until the end of the year.

The good news: Day-old copies of the Communist party’s newspaper Granma, a traditional substitute, are available for less than a U.S. penny. And that’s six to eight full, if rough, pages per day.

Cuban officials say the shortage is the result of the global financial crisis and three devastating hurricanes last summer, which forced cuts in imports as well as domestic production because of reductions in electricity and imports of raw materials.

But CNN commentator Fareed Zakaria says that “at the bottom of this toilet-paper shortage is Cuba’s continuing commitment to its bizarro world of socialist economics.”

“Cuba’s disastrous economy would be a joke were it not for the poverty it has perpetuated among millions of Cubans,” Zakaria said in a video commentary posted last week. “The whole country is stagnating. Fifty percent of its arable fields are going unfarmed. First- and second-year college students work one month out of the year in agriculture.”

“Its insane farm policies lead to frequent shortages of fruit, vegetables and other basic food needs, shortages even more serious than toilet paper,” he added. “And all those programs that they have held up for years as successes of the communist revolution — free education for all through college, universal health care — well, Raul Castro just announced they’re going to have to make cuts in all of these.”

“Meanwhile, the average Cuban still earns less than ... $20 per month,” he concluded. “Now, capitalism has its problems, as we have all seen. But at least we’re not running out of toilet paper.”

The toilet-paper shortage is no joking matter for Cubans.

Toilet paper is not included in the ration card that covers basic goods at highly subsidized prices, so Cubans have long been forced to buy their supplies at so-called “hard currency stores” or use alternatives — Chinese and North Korean magazines have been a favorite because of their soft paper.

On Tuesday, a pack of four Cuban-manufactured toilet-paper rolls was selling in Havana stores for the equivalent of about 28 pesos, or about two days’ salary for the average worker.

“Right now, almost all the stores are out of it, and it’s a miracle that I found it,” said a Havana retiree, who asked for anonymity to avoid problems with authorities, in a telephone interview from Miami.

Cuban officials quoted earlier this month in the official Radio Rebelde predicted “an important importation of toilet paper” by the end of the year “to supply this demand that today is presenting problems.”