From the moment she opens her eyes in the morning until she closes them at night, Diana Ruiz only thinks about the food she needs for her six-year-old child, a dilemma for many Cuban mothers in the face of
food shortages and blackouts
suffered by the island. .
"The first thing I say when I get out of bed is what I'm going to give my son for food and when I go to bed what can I give him for a snack, for his breakfast," Ruiz, a 31-year-old housewife, tells AFP. and four months pregnant, who lives in Nuevo Vedado, a central neighborhood of Havana.
Diana moves in the narrow space between her cupboard, which keeps some rice and a few breads, and the refrigerator that keeps a hamburger, two bottles of water, and a frozen fruit smoothie.
"Everything is there," she says hopelessly in her house where she also lives with her father who suffers from blindness.
Claims for lack of food added to long blackouts, which affected almost the entire Cuban population in recent weeks, led hundreds of people to demonstrate on March 17 in at least four cities in the country, in the largest protests recorded since the historic anti-government marches on July 11, 2021.
These unusual demonstrations broke out in Santiago de Cuba, the second most important city in the country (east), whose inhabitants spent up to 13 hours a day without electricity.
"Food and current" was the demand
of the protesters, among whom were many women.
A street vegetable vendor pushes his wheelbarrow in Havana, Cuba. Photo: EFE
President Miguel Díaz-Canel admitted days later
"an accumulation of long blackouts
that greatly bother the population." Cuba also has "food shortages" due to "fractures in the timely distribution of the basic basket," he added.
The human rights NGO Justicia 11J reported this week that it had recorded 17 arrests related to the protests, while Spain-based Prisoners Defenders told AFP it has documented the arrests of 38 people, of whom six were released.
Imported food and lack of foreign currency
In 2023, the authorities admitted problems due to
lack of foreign currency to import 100% of the basic basket products
that they distribute at subsidized prices, through rationing mechanisms, to the 11 million Cubans.
While, according to official figures, agricultural production fell by 35% between 2019 and 2023.
In February, Cuba requested for the first time support from the UN World Food Program (WFP) to guarantee the supply of milk to children, after announcing that it would not be able to complete the rations for that month.
At the beginning of the year, the authorities also had difficulties delivering bread, due to the delay of ships with wheat that Cuba buys abroad and breakdowns in four of the country's five mills.
This allowed them to produce little more than a third of the total that the country demands.
Blackouts
Although the capital does not suffer the long blackouts that affect the rest of the provinces, for many food arrives in dribs and drabs.
"They come in small quantities, a little book today and another little book in X days (...) we have problems with food," says Aracely Hernández, 73 years old and resident of Bacuranao, a town on the outskirts of Havana.
A family in Havana, with the little food they can buy. Photo: AFP
That retiree says that she receives 1,500 pesos in pension (12.5 dollars at the official exchange rate) and that a package of chicken costs her 3,000 pesos outside the rationing system. "You have to press and hit the pedals because everything is very expensive," she laments.
Since 2021, private stores also sell milk, bread, chicken and other basic products, but
their price is too high in relation to the
average salary.
Unprecedented inflation
In its worst economic crisis in three decades, the island is registering an escalation of inflation. In 2021 it shot up 70%, in 2022 39% and in 2023 30%, levels not seen by Cubans since the triumph of the revolution in 1959.
For Arturo López-Levy, a researcher associated with the school of International Studies at the University of Denver, the tightening of Washington's sanctions hinders all of Cuba's efforts. However, he considers that "the Cuban government has opted for a system that is very hostile to market structures" and that "the model is in crisis."
The government "tries to preach a morality of egalitarian quality that it cannot sustain," he adds.
"What is behind the protests? Fundamentally shortages and a breakdown of the social pact" between the population and the communist government.
This pact cannot be sustained in the past, says López-Levy, referring to the first decades of the revolution, when Cuba had better living conditions thanks to the strong support it received from the defunct Soviet Union.
Source: AFP
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