By Kamil Kenders
HAVANA TIMES – My mother is an excellent maker of homemade sweets. No one left my house without trying some custard, a piece of “panetela” (cake), a small dish of rice pudding, or a flan, which is another of her specialties in pastry.
My father, her longtime taster, is a sweet lover by nature, and I, though not a big consumer, must admit that if my mom had participated in a pastry contest, she would have taken first place. But that’s not the sugar in the sweet, pun intended. For a long time now, “sugar” is one of the scarcest products in modern-day Cuba.
It sounds ironic because anyone familiar with our country’s history knows that since colonial times, this has always been an island of sugarcane fields, a land producing and exporting sugar. And when we talk about exports, it is understood that our sugar, the people’s sugar, is guaranteed. At least it used to be.
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