#Why Cuba now faces a huge food shortage

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A Cuban man wearing a face mask washes a lettuce cultivated in his backyard for sale in Havana.
AFP via Getty Images

Cuba’s Communist dictatorship has now resorted to ordering every citizen to grow as much of their own food as they can — such is what six decades of “socialism” have done to what was once the most prosperous nation in Latin America.

Thanks to the failures of collectivized agriculture, Cuba has long imported two-thirds of its food. But it no longer has the needed $2 billion a year in hard cash — so truck gardens are being dug even in Havana.

The pandemic has killed the tourism industry, while the dictatorship in Venezuela has killed that nation’s economy, so the regime there can’t afford to pay cash for the Cuban secret police who help it keep power.

Allowing private ownership, and significant foreign investment, could have the island economy soaring again — but instead the government, still controlled by Raúl Castro, 89, has mandated truck gardens.

Castro is surely hoping Democrats retake the White House this November to reopen the US cash spigot. But his regime is also imprisoning Cuba’s own Black Lives Matter protesters these days, so perhaps even a Joe Biden victory wouldn’t save the regime from having to let freedom in.