A Cuban primary school teacher identified as Dalai published a video this Thursday on TikTok in which she shows how she spends her entire monthly salary of 3,000 Cuban pesos trying to buy food for the whole month, and concludes with a phrase that summarizes her despair: I think I'm going to starve.
The video, lasting just 27 seconds, follows the format "come with me to spend my salary," which has become an informal form of social protest among Cuban state workers on social media, particularly on TikTok.
"I live in Cuba, and this is me taking you along to spend my entire monthly salary as a primary school teacher. This amounts to 3,000 Cuban pesos and should provide us with food for the whole month. Well, you have a pack of chicken... a whole chicken... how much is that? I feel like I'm going to starve," says Dalai in front of the camera as she tries to stretch money that isn’t sufficient.
The 3,000 Cuban pesos earned by this teacher is equivalent, at the informal exchange rate in effect in April 2026, to just between six and ten dollars per month, a figure that starkly contrasts with the actual cost of food in the informal market.
To understand the magnitude of the problem: a package of chicken in the informal Cuban market costs between 1,800 and 7,000 pesos depending on the province, a pound of rice is around 180 to 500 pesos, and a pound of beans is between 285 and 500 pesos.
In other words, with her full monthly salary, a Cuban teacher can, at best, buy a packet of chicken and a few kilos of rice, which is far from enough to feed a family for thirty days.
Independent studies estimate that the monthly basic basket in Cuba ranges between 25,000 and 50,000 pesos, compared to teacher salaries of between 2,500 and 3,000 pesos, which is even below the national average salary, approximately 6,649 pesos per month, equivalent to about 16 informal dollars.
The video from Dalai is not an isolated case. In January 2026, a young Cuban showcased what she could buy with 2,500 pesos: two packages of sausages, spaghetti, soap, and cracklings. In March 2025, a retiree with a minimum pension of 1,500 pesos could barely afford a pound of rice, a pound of beans, three eggs, ground beef, and garlic, with 60 pesos left over. A teacher on maternity leave in Matanzas revealed that her reduced salary amounted to eight dollars per month.
All these testimonies reflect the same reality: the accumulated inflation in Cuba has surpassed 200% since the so-called Task Ordering in January 2021, which unified the currency but caused prices to soar, almost completely eroding the real value of state salaries.
The salary crisis has direct consequences on the education system. Cuba began the 2024-2025 school year with a deficit of 24,000 teachers nationwide, a figure that exceeds the 17,000 from the previous cycle. Camagüey reported over 2,000 unfilled positions, Matanzas recorded 2,033 teaching vacancies, and Sancti Spíritus started the school year with only 68% coverage.
The Cuban regime responded in January 2026 by recycling an old salary regulation with no real impact on the purchasing power of education workers, while teachers continue to leave the classrooms in search of better conditions, whether in the private sector or by emigrating abroad.
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