“No coffee has come in and no coffee has come in.” The clerk at the winery on Calle E between 23 and 21, in El Vedado in Havana, has chosen to put up two large posters with these words, tired of repeating them with her voice to customers who entered asking about the product and has no idea when there will be.
“I put up the posters so that people would be warned,” he says with annoyance, while recalling that the official press published at the beginning of the year that the distribution of coffee through the book corresponding to January was imminent. “It is not only coffee, nor has compote or milk for children entered, there are minors who have not had milk since last month,” he adds bluntly.
In another winery in the same neighborhood, at 27 y A, the picture is the same. “The coffee has not entered here either,” assured the winemaker.
Where the product does appear is on the black market, but at times. A few blocks from Calle E, in the agromercado de 19 y B, this newspaper was able to verify that an informal vendor was offering each package, of the same that is distributed in the family basket, at 50 pesos. But residents of the area say that it is not always in the informal market.
The disappearance of coffee from the notebook and of the stores in pesos and currencies It has coincided with a significant rise in the price of the package that emigrants buy for their family on the island.
“I come all over El Vedado and Centro Habana looking for a place to have a snack and, incidentally, have a little cup of coffee and nowhere are they selling”
Mayra, a resident of Centro Habana, says in a smiling tone that “her mind cannot function without a sip of coffee.” A few days ago, she was forced to ask her daughter, an emigrant in Spain, to buy her a package from online stores.
His daughter “flatly” refused, he says, because “a 250-gram package of Cubita or any other brand costs more than $ 20 on these sites. For example, one of the stores that offers its merchandise on the Cuballama page, managed from Miami, he is selling 250 grams of the El Arriero brand for $ 25.
“Luckily a friend from the neighborhood, who despite living alone in his house has five more relatives who are in the United States listed, he sold me the six packages that he received from the notebook last month,” Sergio explains, a neighbor of Cerro. “Thanks to that I still have coffee. He sells me each packet for 40 pesos because otherwise I would have to give up to 60 pesos for one on the black market.”
Strained coffee is also absent in private coffee shops. “I come all over El Vedado and Central Havana looking for a place to have a snack and, incidentally, have a little cup of coffee and nowhere are they selling,” says Madelaine, a housewife who decided to go out this Tuesday to do some shopping in the agros. “Even in the cafeterias they put the price on the board, but all the shop assistants tell me the same thing: ‘We don’t have coffee.'”
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