Cuba Has A Shortage Of Beer Because American Tourists Are Drinking All Of It

Alex Buscemi9 years ago

Since the United States eased travel restrictions with Cuba earlier this year, hundreds of thousands of Americans have flocked to the new tourist destination to drink Cristal after Cristal until their fanny packs were bursting at the seams.

We’ve thrown back so many Cuban brews that the nation’s entire industry is nearly tapped.

From The Guardian:

The ubiquitous fridges that dispense beer in Cuba’s bars, cafes and petrol stations are running out of the island’s favourite Cristal and Bucanero brands as a surge in American tourists and the proliferation of new private watering holes put the nation’s main brewery under strain.

Brewer Bucanero needs a new plant to keep pace with demand from tourists and a burgeoning private restaurant sector that competes with state-run outlets for supplies, Mayle Gonzalez, a sales executive at the company, said on Saturday..

…

Cuba received a record 3.5 million visitors last year, up 17% from 2014. American visitors rose 77% to 161,000, in addition to hundreds of thousands of Cuban-Americans, testing the country’s supply of hotel room, rental cars and beer.

But here’s the best part of all this: Through our alcoholism, we are taking a watery, Star Spangled beer shit all over communism. Let me explain.

Cuba is still communist as fuck, meaning the government only gives state-run bars a certain amount of beer to sell. This has led to many establishments opening up private bars upstairs or in basements, where they sell beer shipped in from abroad with zero interference from their fascist leaders.

“Private bars can go out and find supplies where they can, I can only sell what the government gives me,” said the manager of a state-run bar that ran out of beer, while a private bar upstairs had a fridge full of cold bottles.

Defeating communism by getting piss drunk off an ice cold case of quality imports? That’s an idea I can get behind..

[via The Guardian]

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