Rationed food kept Cubans fed during the Cold War. Today an economic crisis has them hungry

By ANDREA RODRIGUEZ
Associated Press

HAVANA (AP) — María de los Ángeles Pozo used to get a little notebook laying out her family’s rations in Cuba’s subsidized neighborhood stores. They’d get everything from hamburgers and fish to chocolate, milk and beer. Cubans universally know it as the “libreta.” Launched in July 1963, the little ration book became one of the pillars of the island’s socialist system. That system has been undergoing a deep economic crisis. Almost half a million Cubans have gone to the U.S. over the last two years, with thousands more heading to Europe. The crisis has led to a dramatic reduction in the availability of rationed food or those who do not leave. And many Cubans’ feelings of being ill-equipped to handle their new, more unequal country has worsened as small private markets have opened.