
January 19, 2014
Sometimes photo slides don't age too well, colors can fade a bit — but in this shot, taken less than 20 years ago, that is all pollution, as smog fills the Yangtze River Delta.
Sometimes photo slides don't age too well, colors can fade a bit — but in this shot, taken less than 20 years ago, that is all pollution, as smog fills the Yangtze River Delta.
Sometimes photo slides don't age too well, colors can fade a bit — but in this shot, taken less than 20 years ago, that is all pollution, as smog fills the Yangtze River Delta.
Milk shortages are not new in Cuba, where the state pays producers less for their milk of what they can gain by selling it on the black market.
A young girl drinks milk inside her home in Cienfuegos, Cuba
HAVANA — "There is no milk" ceased to be a repeated phrase on the island, because everyone knows it and, probably, by now they have resigned themselves.
Children under seven and the elderly with medical diets don’t receive it with the necessary frequency, even if they are the only sectors of the population with the right to acquire it through a government subsidy.
Because there simply is no milk in Cuba.
The rest of Cubans must buy it in stores in freely convertible currency (MLC). However, powdered or fluid milk hasn't been available in stores in MLC for months. Last time, at the beginning of the year, the price of a bag of 1 to 1.2 kilograms was between 6 and 8 MLC ($6-8).
That price today implies paying at least 750 Cuban pesos (CUP) — a third of the minimum wage in Cuba. But there is no powdered milk, not even on the black market.
Cuban cows are blamed. While some are killed illegally, others are in the care of farmers that keep feeding and milking them, despite their own lack of resources.
In this context of crisis, the Cuban Government has shown where its priorities lie: in 2021 it had invested in 4,000 new rooms for international tourism, equivalent to $660 million. With the $165,000 spent on each single room, the government could import at least 10 tractors.
Although the worst production of liquid milk in the last 30 years was in 2005 (353,000 tons), the downward trend began in 2012, reaching 455,000 tons in 2020, which is equivalent to consuming 39.5 liters per inhabitant during a whole year: less than half a glass daily.
In the city of Santa Clara, Leo must receive three liters of milk, every other day, because she is pregnant and has two small children. This year, milk has only arrived at government-subsidized grocery stores once or twice. Half the time her milk is spoiled and she has to turn it into a sweet paste in order to take advantage of it. The problem then is that she doesn't have enough sugar to cook with.
Her neighbor Nereida, 80 years old, has been prescribed a medical diet, due to various ailments, and is entitled to a liter of milk five times a month. "During the month of April I only received it three times," she says.
At the end of 2020, the official press recognized the inability to meet the needs of the prioritized groups in Villa Clara, which account for 77,000 liters per day. Deliveries ranged between 68,000 and 69,000 liters.
The government pays Cuban farmers around $0.71 per liter of milk, depending on its quality
Gonzalo is a bricklayer, but every day he gets up at 4.15 a.m. to milk 20 cows at the cooperative where his friend Manuel works, on the outskirts of Remedios, Villa Clara. He is paid in fresh milk.
Cow owners can decide to kill their cows if they first meet the commitments with state contracts for the sale of milk and meat, and guarantee the growth of the herd, without shortages. Manuel, who has worked in the cooperative for 12 years, believes that the measure adopted by the government to increase production is late.
The penalty for the crime of illegal slaughter of large cattle in Cuba is three to eight years in prison, and two to five for those who sell, transport or trade their meat, according to article 317.1 of the new Penal Code.
Sometimes you wonder if it's worth all this effort...
“Yes, it is very good that now they let you kill the cow that you raise with your sacrifice and work (before you couldn't in any way), but that alone was never the real problem. The state pays producers too little for milk, they often don't comply with payments, there is a lack of specific incentives, such as access to resources and equipment… they don't talk about that”, Manuel shrugs.
“Sometimes you wonder if it's worth all this effort... But then you see the hunger and you understand that you are on the front line to achieve what everyone needs. At least here and now I get milk for my family,” says Manuel. “People are very hungry and that is why they are killing many cows illegally. I know of some guajiros (farmers) who have one or two small cows and out of fear of them being stolen, they even keep them inside their houses."
“Until now they haven't come in here because this area is a bit remote, but there is always the possibility. Hopefully, the dogs we have will warn us," says Manuel as he prepares to set off on his bicycle towards Villa Clara.
The majority of Cuban farmers transfer milk production to the collection centers with donkey-pulled carts.
The government pays around $0.71 per liter of milk, depending on its quality, according to the measure approved on November 1, 2021, which aimed at increasing production. On the black market, the liter can cost up to $1.46. For producers, it is more lucrative to produce cheese or yogurt and sell it on the black market, at $7.29 per pound.
The government blames the difficulties on the pandemic and the toughening of the U.S. embargo on Cuba. This is how they justify not having been able to import containers and packaging, which has affected the distribution of all products, like coffee and milk. People must bring their own containers to subsidized food supply stores to purchase milk.
At the end of April 2022, several independent Cuban media organizations echoed the viral video of the Spanish influencer Rosa Martorell about the distribution of milk in the town of Trinidad, in the centre of the island. Indeed, the absence of individual containers for the delivery of milk implies its irregular distribution through pipes, and the hoses and plastic tanks that contain it are not hygienic.
Milk shortages are not new in Cuba, where the state pays producers less for their milk of what they can gain by selling it on the black market.
"Taiwanese would laugh at the leader worship of the North Koreans, but wasn't that what we did in the days of Chiang Kai-shek?"
In the bohemian Australian seaside town of Byron Bay, rents are now higher than Sydney or Melbourne. And as Airbnb takes its toll, this small town has almost as many homeless people as Sydney.
The longer the war in Ukraine continues, the louder calls will grow for a ceasefire . Stockholm-based analysts explain how the West can reach a viable deal on this: primarily by avoiding strategic mistakes from last time following the annexation of Crimea.
Central to the tragic absurdity of this war is the question of language. Vladimir Putin has repeated that protecting ethnic Russians and the Russian-speaking populations of Ukraine was a driving motivation for his invasion.
Yet one month on, a quick look at the map shows that many of the worst-hit cities are those where Russian is the predominant language: Kharkiv, Odesa, Kherson.
Then there is Mariupol, under siege and symbol of Putin’s cruelty. In the largest city on the Azov Sea, with a population of half a million people, Ukrainians make up slightly less than half of the city's population, and Mariupol's second-largest national ethnicity is Russians. As of 2001, when the last census was conducted, 89.5% of the city's population identified Russian as their mother tongue.
Between 2018 and 2019, I spent several months in Mariupol. It is a rugged but beautiful city dotted with Soviet-era architecture, featuring wide avenues and hillside parks, and an extensive industrial zone stretching along the shoreline. There was a vibrant youth culture and art scene, with students developing projects to turn their city into a regional cultural center with an international photography festival.
There were also many offices of international NGOs and human rights organizations, a consequence of the fact that Mariupol was the last major city before entering the occupied zone of Donbas. Many natives of the contested regions of Luhansk and Donetsk had moved there, taking jobs in restaurants and hospitals. I had fond memories of the welcoming from locals who were quicker to smile than in some other parts of Ukraine. All of this is gone.
Putin is bombing the very people he has claimed to want to rescue.
According to the latest data from the local authorities, 80% of the port city has been destroyed by Russian bombs, artillery fire and missile attacks, with particularly egregious targeting of civilians, including a maternity hospital, a theater where more than 1,000 people had taken shelter and a school where some 400 others were hiding.
The official civilian death toll of Mariupol is estimated at more than 3,000. There are no language or ethnic-based statistics of the victims, but it’s likely the majority were Russian speakers.
So let’s be clear, Putin is bombing the very people he has claimed to want to rescue.
Putin’s Public Enemy No. 1, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, is a mother-tongue Russian speaker who’d made a successful acting and comedy career in Russian-language broadcasting, having extensively toured Russian cities for years.
Rescuers carry a person injured during a shelling by Russian troops of Kharkiv, northeastern Ukraine.
Yes, the official language of Ukraine is Ukrainian, and a 2019 law aimed to ensure that it is used in public discourse, but no one has ever sought to abolish the Russian language in everyday life. In none of the cities that are now being bombed by the Russian army to supposedly liberate them has the Russian language been suppressed or have the Russian-speaking population been discriminated against.
Sociologist Mikhail Mishchenko explains that studies have found that the vast majority of Ukrainians don’t consider language a political issue. For reasons of history, culture and the similarities of the two languages, Ukraine is effectively a bilingual nation.
"The overwhelming majority of the population speaks both languages, Russian and Ukrainian,” Mishchenko explains. “Those who say they understand Russian poorly and have difficulty communicating in it are just over 4% percent. Approximately the same number of people say the same about Ukrainian.”
In general, there is no problem of communication and understanding. Often there will be conversations where one person speaks Ukrainian, and the other responds in Russian. Geographically, the Russian language is more dominant in the eastern and central parts of Ukraine, and Ukrainian in the west.
Like most central Ukrainians I am perfectly bilingual: for me, Ukrainian and Russian are both native languages that I have used since childhood in Kyiv. My generation grew up on Russian rock, post-Soviet cinema, and translations of foreign literature into Russian. I communicate in Russian with my sister, and with my mother and daughter in Ukrainian. I write professionally in three languages: Ukrainian, Russian and English, and can also speak Polish, French, and a bit Japanese. My mother taught me that the more languages I know the more human I am.
At the same time, I am not Russian — nor British or Polish. I am Ukrainian. Ours is a nation with a long history and culture of its own, which has always included a multi-ethnic population: Russians, Belarusians, Moldovans, Crimean Tatars, Bulgarians, Romanians, Hungarians, Poles, Jews, Greeks. We all, they all, have found our place on Ukrainian soil. We speak different languages, pray in different churches, we have different traditions, clothes, and cuisine.
My mother taught me that the more languages I know the more human I am.
Like in other countries, these differences have been the source of conflict in our past. But it is who we are and will always be, and real progress has been made over the past three decades to embrace our multitudes. Our Jewish, Russian-speaking president is the most visible proof of that — and is in fact part of what our soldiers are fighting for.
Many in Moscow were convinced that Russian troops would be welcomed in Ukraine as liberating heroes by Russian speakers. Instead, young soldiers are forced to shoot at people who scream in their native language.
Starving people ina street of Kharkiv in 1933, during the famine
Diocesan Archive of Vienna (Diözesanarchiv Wien)/BA Innitzer
Putin has tried to rally the troops by warning that in Ukraine a “genocide” of ethnic Russians is being carried out by a government that must be “de-nazified.”
These are, of course, words with specific definitions that carry the full weight of history. The Ukrainian people know what genocide is not from books. In my hometown of Kyiv, German soldiers massacred Jews en masse. My grandfather survived the Buchenwald concentration camp, liberated by the U.S. army. My great-grandmother, who died at the age of 95, survived the 1932-33 famine when the Red Army carried out the genocide of the Ukrainian middle class, and her sister disappeared in the camps of Siberia, convicted for defying rationing to try to feed her children during the famine.
On Tuesday, came a notable report of one of the latest civilian deaths in the besieged Russian-speaking city of Kharkiv: a 96-year-old had been killed when shelling hit his apartment building. The victim’s name was Boris Romanchenko; he had survived Buchenwald and two other Nazi concentration camps during World War II. As President Zelensky noted: Hitler didn’t manage to kill him, but Putin did.
Genocide has returned to Ukraine, from Kharkiv to Kherson to Mariupol, as Vladimir Putin had warned. But it is his own genocide against the Russian-speaking population of Ukraine.