“Sometimes I want to give up, every day it is more difficult to survive in this situation.” Paco is 72 years old and has invested 43 of them in working but his pension of 1,700 pesos is just over half of the 3,000 pesos that the basic food basket has reached in Cuba with the entry into force of the Ordinance Task in January of this year.
The reform czar, Marino Murillo, admitted last week that inflation had skyrocketed and the basket had risen to approximately double what was expected, 1,528 pesos. The average salary of a worker is around 5,000 pesos and it is already difficult to do more than survive, but for retirees, like Paco, the problem is suffocating.
“What bothers me most about all this is that they know that we do not have enough pension money to survive, but they do nothing to fix it,” denounces Paco, a resident of the Cerro municipality, in the Cuban capital, and that he insists on using this fictitious name so as not to be identified by people close to the Government.
Food is Paco’s first problem, but by no means the last or the most serious. His home has considerable damage due to lack of maintenance and he cannot even hear about renovations, when he barely has enough to eat or buy medicine. “In my good days I used to hand over the house, plaster, paint … But now it’s impossible, because everything is too expensive or in freely convertible currency stores, where I can’t buy. The only thing I can do is picking up the rubble when a piece of plaster falls from the ceiling, “he laments.
Gas, water, and electricity bills also play havoc with Paco’s checkbook, as he tries to save as much as he can to pay less. “It’s not just the monthly bills. Recently the building’s motor broke down and I had to call my son to take care of paying the 300 pesos they collected per apartment. Then my kitchen broke, and I bought a small and repaired one , which they gave me in installments. Grace cost me almost three months of suffering, because I stopped buying food to pay for that, “he explains.
Now he is worried about something apparently minor, but sad for the life of the retiree. Paco acquired his Panda brand television with the stimulus you won at your last job. Although you recently finished paying for it, the device is about to be useless. “When it breaks I definitely don’t know what I’m going to do, but there is also the mess of digital television. The Government thinks that I can allocate 1,200 pesos to buy the famous small box – he says in reference to the digital decoder -, but I prefer to eat to watch television “.
Another open front in Paco’s difficult domestic economy is clothing. Both this and the footwear have exploded in such a way that it is impossible for him to renew his clothing. His worn and unique shoes and a hole in the sweater he is wearing attest to that. “It is inconceivable that I don’t have anything to wear either. Many times I have had to turn to relatives to leave me some old clothes or shoes. I feel totally helpless by the Government, and also afraid of complaining, because we already know well how they treat them. to those who disagree. “
But at his age, perhaps the most worrying thing is the lack of access to medicine. In the midst of the pandemic, he had to stop taking some drugs that were simply lacking, and he has had to endure pain caused by two nodules in the liver because there are no pills. “When I can’t take any more, I go to the doctor to get injections, but sometimes not even like that, because the lack of drugs has also occurred in hospitals.”
Fortunately, he has had the help of some neighbors who shared with him some painkillers, although there have been those who tried to charge him a fortune taking advantage of the shortage. “My soul breaks when a vendor shows up and offers me a pomito with 50 ibuprofen in 1,000 pesos, I don’t know where we’re going to stop.”
Paco is one of many retirees who suffer the same problems every day, even some of them with social benefits. Luckily, she has the collaboration of her children, but things are not easy for the youngest. “My children help me as much as they can, although they also have it difficult, and that’s how I’m pulling, a little from here, a little from there,” explains Paco.
In this last year, and at the risk of catching coronavirus, he has had to queue to resell the odd product to, with the money earned, go to the agricultural market to buy some food, vegetables or seasoning. “Before I did not stand in line or die, now I have no choice.
Paco regrets that retirement is harder than he thought and has considered doing some work to complete it, such as collecting raw materials, acting as a courier or cutting the lawn of a garden, but he admits that he is no longer healthy for that and feels dependent on a few pesos that his nephew sends him “from the revolted and brutal capitalism that those from here criticize so much.”
When asked if he still trusts the Cuban system, Paco is clear: “If what we are experiencing is the socialism promised by Fidel in the 1960s, I don’t want it. I don’t even know what will happen to me next month. , I only think about how I survive in my near future and I will leave this world one day with a thorn stuck in my heart, because I regret a thousand times not having been able to leave here when I had the chance “.
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