Castile melon, Chinese plum and even mangoes. The supply in the private market on 19 and B streets, in Havana’s Vedado, has increased in recent weeks, as Christmas is coming. However, most buyers see this entire burgeoning variety as a mirage, because they cannot afford the high prices of the products.
“This market should be renamed and put ‘all for one hundred'”, says a woman sarcastically at the entrance of the busy shop. “A 4-pound piece of fruit bomb costs 100 pesos, half a melonito 100, a mango 100”, and he cries: “A mango! Where are we going to stop?”
In this agricultural market, which some ironically call “the boutique” not so much for its assortment, greater than in other places, as for its prices, the prices of pork, at 195 pesos per pound, and some vegetables, such as carrots and beets, at 50 pesos per pound.
The outlook for the state-run 17 and K market was not much better, as although the products cost slightly less, there were only eight or nine for sale. In the case of onions, there was not even a difference with a private trade: in both places the price was 75 pesos per pound. “The onion here should cost less,” says one customer as he meticulously chooses small, medium-quality tomatoes. “Only in the case of the dwelling the price is lower, and the lower quality tomato costs 40 when the individuals have it at 50. It does not make much difference.”
Up to 600 pesos this week reached the carton of eggs in the stall of some vendors on the left “
In other small squares of Centro Habana visited by this newspaper, the situation was repeated: in San Rafael the pound of eggplant reached 40 pesos per pound this Thursday and the male banana, 7 pesos per unit. “Those days of drinking eggplant water for cholesterol are over,” says an old woman. “Two of the smallest aubergines can cost up to 60 pesos. What else can a retiree buy here other than sweet potato and pumpkin (at 10 pesos per pound)?”
The cost of all this, the Cubans on the street agree, went through the roof from the Sorting Task. Before these measures, in force for almost a year, you could find pork steak at 35 pesos per pound. “At most 50,” says a neighbor from Centro Habana. “I have never eaten a pork steak from January to here, and neither do I buy tomatoes. If that is me, who is not poor, what will the ordinary Cuban be like.”
And if prices are high within the formal markets, outside, in the illegal market, they go to the stratosphere. Up to 600 pesos reached this week the carton of eggs in the stall of some vendors to the left. “I have to sell it at that price because it is also expensive for me,” the man explained to this newspaper. “Yesterday they gave my wife a fine of 10,000 pesos because she was sitting in front of the market with a mayonnaise in her hands, and before they had given us a 2,000 peso fine each. How am I going to pay all that money? “.
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