Neighbors of Havana complain about how reduced the basic basket ended up: “There is none”, “It still doesn’t fit” –
HAVANA, Cuba. – In the wineries, the echo of scarcity resonates like a mantra: “There is none,” “It is not in yet,” “We are waiting for it.” They are the short, almost automatic responses of the clerks to the customers who come daily with the hope of buying a product from the basic basket, that package of regulated foods that increasingly arrives later and incomplete to consumers.
Delays in distribution mainly hit households with fixed incomes, where the basic basket constitutes the floor on which the monthly meals are planned. When it fails, its dependence on particular markets, whose prices are more expensive, increases. It is then time to sacrifice proteins to stretch carbohydrates, which swell and fill the stomach more.
Although official reports show progress in the recovery of distribution, especially in Havana, dissonances persist between what was announced and what the consumer finds in their warehouse.
Since July, municipalities in the capital such as Arroyo Naranjo, Diez de Octubre and Boyeros have only sold between two and five pounds of rice. Meanwhile, since August, one-year-old children have barely received a kilogram of milk. For its part, the distribution of sugar, salt, grains, pasta and coffee owes fees that date back to the first months of the year.
Through local authorities, the Government of Havana has been reporting that before the end of December the delivery of overdue food and products will be updated. “That’s what the president of the Popular Council said when he visited private businesses in the area,” said Yunia Medina Arredondo, owner of a cafeteria in the Eléctrico neighborhood, Arroyo Naranjo municipality.
However, the population receives these promises with skepticism. “Who is going to believe him?” asks Medina, who assures that this is not the first time that a government representative “runs a similar ball” while “two-year-old children are still waiting for shipments of milk that were pending in 2024,” he said.
According to the Ministry of Domestic Trade (MINCIN), the delays in the regulated basic basket They are due to “financial and logistical problems”, a diagnosis that has been repeated in several public communications since the beginning of the year.
Last March, the prime minister of the Cuban regime, Manuel Marrero Cruz, announced a reorganization of internal trade with the objective of “correcting organizational and distribution failures”, but a schedule for the beginning of said normalization has not yet been announced.
“People no longer believe in millstones. What counts is what arrives at the winery. What doesn’t arrive doesn’t exist. Last year they said the same thing and the late rice never arrived; with the coffee and the cleaning it was a hassle. Everything was missing, nothing came complete,” said Orlando Aranda Breñas, a resident of Luyanó, in Diez de Octubre.
He himself uses an irrefutable argument to account for the shortage: the vast majority of the boxes in his supply book in 2024 were left immaculate, without marks indicating that the product they represent was delivered. “They don’t send anything because, supposedly, there aren’t any in the country, and instead the dollar stores have coffee, milk, compotes or whatever you’re looking for,” he highlighted.
Implemented in 1962, in recent decades the basic basket has never been enough to cover food for more than 10 days. In recent years, the constant reduction in the variety of its products and the quantities of these assigned to each consumer caused many people to express that it should disappear to make way for freed sales.
However, the growing shortage of food and price inflation led to it regaining relevance, becoming a lifesaver. The little that should reach the Cuban table in this way means the substantial savings of at least one week not having to pay a thousand pesos for a liter of oil or 250 for a pound of rice.
“There is no plan B, when it does not arrive [lo que corresponde] everything gets complicated. Buying in foreign currency is out of my reach and on the street the prices are high for people like me, who live on salaries. What they give is very little, a pittance, but anything is good,” argued Mercedes Pérez Fondín, courier assistant at a medical laboratory.
a new report Food Monitor Program (FMP) estimates that an adult couple living in Havana needs at least 41,735 pesos to cover a barely sufficient diet. The figure is equivalent to almost 20 minimum wages or two years of minimum pensions, according to the official income table.
Created to guarantee the food security of the people, the supply book currently reflects the inequality between those who can access markets in foreign currency and meet the prices of private businesses, and those who are still dependent on this almost obsolete rationing document.
Rosa María Oquendo Téllez, from Centro Habana, says that her six-year-old daughter gets dizzy at school because for more than a month she has only had a glass of herbal tea and sugar for breakfast, replacing the powdered milk that does not make it into the basic basket.
“In private individuals, a bag is almost worth 3,000 pesos. If I buy one, some days I cannot buy food for the afternoon, because the money is not enough for both things. Sometimes he has bread for breakfast and sometimes I have to save it for lunch, when I have nothing else to give him,” the interviewee said.
“I don’t even want them to send meat anymore. I just want what they say we get, to arrive; or for the salary to rise according to what the prices are on the street. Hunger is pressing us, now is when we need the basic basket the most,” Oquendo said.
