Havana – From Milk To Lightbulbs, Fidel Castro Reshaped Life In Cuba

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    A man walks his daughter from school past a mural of the late Fidel Castro, flanked by a quote from Castro that says in Spanish: "Fight against the impossible and overcome" in Havana, Cuba, Monday, Nov. 28, 2016. Some Cubans fondly remember Castro for his personal involvement in the daily problems of individual citizens, while others say he created a leader-dependent autocracy that remains virtually immobile without direct commands from the president. (AP Photo/Dario Lopez-Mills)Havana – Fidel Castro changed the flavor of the milk Cuban children drink at breakfast.

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    He filled Cuban kitchens with energy-saving rice cookers, and he gave a two-hour lesson in their use live on national television. He even changed the nation’s lightbulbs, launching a nationwide campaign to replace incandescent bulbs with fluorescents that cast a pallid white light in Cuban homes to this day.

    Castro, who died Friday night at 90, gained global stature with grand visions: confronting the United States; building universal health care and education; sending Cuba’s doctors to heal the Third World’s sick and its soldiers to fight alongside socialist allies from Vietnam to Angola.

    At home, he expended vast quantities of time and energy remaking the minutest aspects of life in the country he ruled for nearly 50 years. Obsessive, restless, fixated on details, Castro is being remembered by many Cubans for his decades of smaller-scale, often quixotic initiatives to implant Soviet-style central planning on an unruly and improvisational Caribbean island.

    Ten years after Castro turned power over to his brother Raul, the artifacts of his time in command still feature in the daily lives of average Cubans, particularly those related to Castro’s passions for agricultural productivity and energy-saving. Millions of Cubans still depend on the pale-blue ration book that once provided a month’s worth of free food, reduced today to about 15 days of rice, beans, eggs, chicken, cooking oil, salt and sugar.

    In November 2005, Castro tried to persuade his countrymen to also feed their children “chocolatin,” a mix of powdered milk and cocoa distributed to families in 200-gram (seven-ounce) bags.
    Leoanis, a student who is studying journalism, shows his marked fingernails as he pays tribute to Cuba's late President Fidel Castro in Santiago de Cuba, Cuba, November 28, 2016.    REUTERS/Alberto Reyes
    “Seven of every 11 grams are whole milk powder, believe me,” he said. “Check it if you’re skeptical. Take it to a laboratory and test it. There’s also four grams of cocoa, which is very strong, as strong as it is healthy. I know that our doctors over there in the mountains of Kashmir are drinking their chocolate every night.”

    To this day, it’s hard to find a Cuban child who doesn’t ask for chocolate-flavored morning milk, itself a legacy of Castro’s pledge to give every Cuban under age 7 one liter of milk every day.

    In 1961, two years after Castro’s revolution won power, the new Cuban government launched an ambitious campaign to stamp out illiteracy. Some 250,000 volunteer teachers, many of them young women, fanned out across the country, especially in rural areas where access to education was spotty and the need was greatest. In the space of a year, about 700,000 people learned to read and write, said “Maestra,” a documentary that explores the initiative’s history. Today, Cuba reports a literacy rate of 99.8 percent, on par with the most developed nations in the world.

    In 1960, Castro launched the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, neighborhood watch groups given the job of implementing social welfare projects and natural disaster assistance, looking out for the elderly and organizing modest block parties. They also serve as the government’s eyes and ears, networks of informants that enforce compliance and watch for suspicious activity such as political dissidence or an illegal satellite hookup. The committees are so ubiquitous that just about everyone in Cuba, especially in the cities, still lives within sight of the home of a committee member.
    A man wears face paint as he waits to pay tribute to Cuba's late President Fidel Castro in Havana, Cuba, November 28, 2016.     REUTERS/Edgard Garrido
    In 1985, many Cubans stopped smoking when Castro abandoned his ubiquitous cigars as part of a nationwide campaign against tobacco, which remains one of the island’s principal exports.

    Some Cubans fondly remember his personal involvement in the daily problems of individual citizens, while others say he created a leader-dependent autocracy that remains virtually immobile without direct commands from the president.

    “A friend of mine solved her housing problem when she got Fidel’s response to her letter seeking help,” said Elisa Marquez, a 54-year-old state human resources manager. “With his signature on the letter, it got fixed.”

    In 2005, Castro’s government decided as part of its “energy revolution” that the incandescent light bulb’s time was up. Workers went door-to-door across the country as people handed over old 60-watt bulbs and were given energy-efficient replacements in the 5- to 18-watt range, with the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution helping keep track of those who complied. The switch is still evident today in millions of dimly lit homes, stores and offices. Some people have complained that the light is barely enough to read by or for kids to do homework after nightfall.

    In March 2005, Castro stunned islanders with the sudden announcement that the government would hand out 100,000 new pressure cookers each month until some 2.5 million were distributed in all — and that still more would then be made available at subsidized prices, along with Chinese-made rice cookers. The move “will do away with the rustic kitchen,” Castro said in remarks to the Federation of Cuban Women.

    Today the pressurized appliances remain a fixture in households everywhere.


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    16 Comments
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    pushkin
    pushkin
    7 years ago

    Why romanticize about a tyrant? As his daughter,who was smuggled to USA, called her own father.

    BogusMilsky
    BogusMilsky
    7 years ago

    Castro confiscated the homes and businesses of Jews living in Havana and Cinfuegos, He mocked the Jews calling them Polakis
    He destroyed a thriving vibrant Shefardi and Ashekenazi Jewish community in Cuba.
    He jailed Alan Gross for 5 years 2009 -2015 on false charges.
    His predecessor Batista was an abhorrent sub human as well.

    Unfortunately VIN covers Castro like it covered Hillary .
    VIN has become the chazzar tregar for the liberal elite media and despot dictators.

    7 years ago

    AND….. everybody was poor.

    MyThreeCents
    MyThreeCents
    7 years ago

    The country was stuck in the 1950’s

    abilenetx
    abilenetx
    7 years ago

    Is this article a joke, there were rice cookers, but no rice. There was free medical but no doctors and if needed medicine, no medicine to give the person. On, and on. Raul is just a prop Fidel was always the leader of the country even when he gave the leadership to his brother, his brother always consulted with Fidel. Without Fidel who knows where this will lead now to we have to wait and see.

    Aron1
    Active Member
    Aron1
    7 years ago

    From this article you’d think he was a “lamed-vuvnik”.

    Liepa
    Liepa
    7 years ago

    Everyone is trying to dice and slice and repackage this menuval into a hero of sorts. Once a menuval cholera, always a menuval cholera, no matter how he’s being repackaged by the liberal daydreamers !!!

    Liepa
    Liepa
    7 years ago

    As long as this YOTZ was amongst the living and Cubans were scared to express themselves, nu meilah, but if they profess such love for this op-garissena shoitah, then they deserve their 1950’s backwards lifestyle !!!!!

    7 years ago

    A truly sickening article by the AP.

    DryCast
    DryCast
    7 years ago

    Hey, are you guys nuts? This article is junk. He was a tyrant who enslaved a country. He killed thousands. He took away free speech – free thought and human dignity. Only criminals ever tried to get to Cuba – why did thousands attempt to flee if it was such a paradise. My wife is from Cuba – her Uncle spent 7 years in a Cuban prison for attempting to leave the country. Shameful that you would print such garbage. How about a nice piece on Arafat to coincide with the opening of a museum in his honor? What in the world are you thinking?

    Liepa
    Liepa
    7 years ago

    He’s got ’em all brainwashed !!!

    RocklandRes
    RocklandRes
    7 years ago

    Fidel – Made Cuba great again. /s

    Buchwalter
    Buchwalter
    7 years ago

    In WW II only Brazil fought along the Allies. Paraguay and Argentinia were pro-Nazi. Fidel Castro was a communist and supported Yasser Arafat. Colonel Battista was a criminal and involved with the Mafia. Except for Brazil Sotuh America including Cuba do nor democracy

    greuv
    greuv
    7 years ago

    This guy was a mass torturer and mass murderer. I guess the writer of the article was a real starry-eyed ignoramus.

    bubble
    bubble
    7 years ago

    every child’s dream chocolate milk for breakfast wow what we missed out on