Food, including the most basic staples, has been rationed in Cuba ever since 1963, which never happened before the Castro era. Milk wasn’t just rationed but restricted to certain people, chiefly children up to the age of 7. Then, in 2007, not long after Raúl Castro became the island’s hereditary dictator, he publicly promised that the production of milk would increase so that all Cubans could drink it freely. Seventeen years later, Cubans are still waiting.
Mind you, this was a relatively modest promise, much less grandiose than the fantastical promises Fidel Castro liberally cranked out, especially in the early days of his reign–such as a standard of living higher than that of the US (or any country in the world, for that matter). Not only did that never happen, but Cubans’ quality of life plummeted, so that now there are serious shortages of practically everything imaginable, and Cubans are fleeing the island in droves.
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