The leader did not say where they could get the components of his detailed list, but he did recommend that his local subordinates “demand compliance”
14ymedio, Havana, 30 August 2024 — Escorted by a press team that could not be more loyal to him, the first secretary of the Communist Party of Villa Clara embarked on a journey to one of the great forgotten places of the province: Cifuentes. The tour – narrated in an almost evangelical tone by Vanguardia – describes Osnay Colina’s “edifying lessons” to the farmers, his diatribes against poor production and his “instructive demeanor,” an euphemism to describe his main objective: to scold.
Everyone has left Cifuentes, immersed in the “geographical dispersion” and without resources to guarantee this year’s agricultural goals, of which Colina reminded them insistently. There was no lack of the photographs that Miguel Díaz-Canel has tried to popularize: those of the leader with two or three farmers, who hear from the mouth of a bureaucrat how to do their work.
In the newly founded Agricultural Industrial Company, which was granted 10,000 hectares, Colina gave his first scolding: 10% of the land suffers a “heavy infestation of marabou,” and in the arable area only 72% of the plan has been sown, in “imminent closure.” To top it off, the Company abounds in illegalities, which he asked to be “contained,” and the stocks of milk and meat are plummeting.
There was no lack of the photographs that Miguel Díaz-Canel has tried to popularize: those of the leader with two or three farmers
Colina’s rigid face, his authoritarian gesture and his speech under the sun were highlighted by the newspaper photographer. Among his many utopian requests was “planting despite the limitations of resources and technological packages, machinery, fuels and the use of animal traction.” The leader did not say where the farmers could get the components of his detailed list, but he did recommend that his local subordinates “demand compliance.”
“A lot of food escapes to third parties,” he warned, alluding to Cifuentes’ black market. Colina asked to go to the farms to see “wha
