There are no longer faces glued to the windows or bustle at the entrance. The La Época store, in the central corner of Galiano and Neptuno, in Centro Habana, has its refrigerators completely empty. Not even the markets in freely convertible currency (MLC) are spared from the worsening of the crisis in Cuba. What once were shops for people privileged to have foreign currency, today emulate, in their lack of supply, rationing warehouses.
“This has been like this for weeks,” a client of La Época told this Monday 14ymedio. The woman went to the butcher shop, located in the basement of the building, looking for some sausages or “a turkey mince, at least, to make some croquettes”, but she found that the refrigerators, turned off and with the doors open , are stacked in the center. The employees, arms crossed, do not know what to answer when asked if they will receive meat products soon.
With the elongated faces, customers move through other areas of the store as well. “There’s no protein at all,” a young man yells at an old man who is peering down the stairs leading to the basement. “Don’t even go down, this is bare,” he reiterates, and the other turns around and returns to the main floor, also with workers with bored expressions and deserted shelves or with merchandise that no one cares to carry.
“Don’t even go to Boyeros and Camagüey, it’s empty”, “La Puntilla looks like a cemetery”, “Never, up to 3rd and 70 is like a dance floor without music”, “There’s nothing on 3rd and 28, like at gas stations”
The most frustrated direct their steps towards the La Isla de Cuba market, also in MLC and located a few meters from Parque de la Fraternidad. There are only a few large imported pork loins left, at 11 dollars per kilogram and with the obligation to buy the whole piece. Two women who come together calculate to see if between the two of them it is convenient to buy a piece of a little more than 6 kilos, which already gives off a strong smell. Despite the high price, “it’s this or nothing, because in Cuban pesos the pork is through the roof and of very poor quality,” says one of them.
Outside of La Isla de Cuba, on a nearby bench and under the shade of a tree, the two women check their phones. They are registered in a WhatsApp group where they share information about the MLC stores in Havana. In the last hundred messages that have arrived, very similar phrases are repeated: “Don’t even go to Boyeros and Camagüey, it’s empty”, “La Puntilla looks like a cemetery”, “Never, until 3rd and 70 is like a dance without music” and, to top it off, the one who equates these shops with the service centers without fuel: “There’s nothing on 3rd and 28, like at the gas stations.”
Havana holds its breath: you can’t even get food with hard currency.
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