Economic crisis leaves many in Cuba hungry
Food subsidies dwindle amid inflation, missed production goals
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 a half-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 [is] delayed,” said Pozo, 57, a school worker who retired to care for her disabled sister and father in the apartment they share in 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 up to eight hours and shortages of food.
State media confirmed the protests in Santiago, and videos showing people chanting “electricity and food” were quickly shared by Cubans on and off the island on platforms like X and Facebook. A nongovernmental human rights group that monitors Cuba said there had been at least three arrests.
Pozo pays only $2 at the subsidized state stores at current exchange rates. In February, she got a few pounds of rice, beans, some sugar and salt, oil, processed meat and soap for her family of three.
Pozo said she doesn’t receive money from relatives overseas, a major marker of class differences in Cuba and one about 70% of families get.
While there are no official figures, many experts estimate Cubans overseas sent $3 billion home in 2019.
Cuba has long struggled with a lack of production.
The lack of hard currency and needed equipment is making the situation even worse without agricultural supplies like insecticides and fertilizers, said Ricardo Torres, an economist at American University in Washington.
Without a functioning market economy, Cuban agriculture has long measured itself by socialist production goals that it has rarely been able to meet.
Camaguey, one of Cuba’s main ranching hubs, produced only 11.3 million gallons of milk last year, out of 21.5 million gallons producers had agreed to sell.
Producers, for their part, complain government prices don’t cover expenses.
The Cuban government blames the economic damage wrought by the pandemic, along with U.S. sanctions and severe inflation.
“You can see today private stores that have all the products that you want: milk, bread, sugar — whatever you want — at prices that are not accessible to the majority of the population,” Deputy Foreign Minister Carlos Fernández de Cossío said in a interview with The Associated Press. “The government continues to be committed to provide an equal amount to all.”
Official figures show Cuba’s annual inflation has averaged nearly 50% a year over the last three years — along with a 2% contraction in the nation’s gross domestic product.
Faced with that scenario, the government has been trying to reduce the number of people who receive subsidized food from an estimated 4 million.