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

abcnews.go.com:

María de los Ángeles Pozo used to get a little notebook laying out her family’s rations in Cuba’s subsidized neighborhood stores

HAVANA — Like millions of other Cubans, María de los Ángeles Pozo thinks back fondly to when a government ration book fed her family everything from hamburgers, fish and milk to chocolate and beer. People would even get cakes for birthdays and weddings.

The “libreta,” as Cubans know it, was launched in July 1963 and became one of the pillars of the island’s socialist system, helping people through crises including the cutbacks in Soviet aid that led to the 1990s deprivation known as the “Special Period.”

That system is undergoing a deep economic crisis that has prompted the exodus of almost half a million Cubans to the U.S. over the last two years, with thousands more heading to Europe. It also has led to a dramatic reduction in the availability of rationed food for those who do not leave.

Many Cubans feel ill-equipped to handle their new, more unequal country, a feeling that has worsened as small private markets have opened, charging prices similar to international ones in a country that hasn’t allowed non-state commerce in recent decades and where incomes remain between $16 and $23 monthly.

“Everything comes in small portions and delayed,” said Pozo, 57, a school worker who retired to care for her disabled sister and father in the apartment they share in Old Havana. They earn $10 a month between the three.

Basic goods like a kilo (2.2 pounds) of powdered milk can cost as much as $8.

“We don’t have the goods that we were used to anymore,” Pozo said. “We’re suffering a lot of deprivation.”

Protesters took to the streets in the eastern city of Santiago this month decrying power outages lasting