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A Cuban identified as María Julia Benítez Cordero reported on Facebook the chaos she experienced while trying to pick up a liquefied gas cylinder purchased through SuperMarket23 at a location in Alamar, in the municipality of Habana del Este, where she found a line of more than 200 people waiting in the sun since the early morning hours.
According to her account, her daughter made the purchase on Saturday from abroad, the confirmation arrived on Sunday, and the pickup was scheduled for Monday at the designated location in Alamar.
"When I arrived in the morning, there were over 200 people, many of them elderly, some even from Campo Florido," wrote Benítez Cordero, noting that this locality is far from Alamar and that its residents had to pay for hired transport that had to wait for more than three hours.
Dulce María Serpa, one of the individuals who commented on the post, specified that for those who traveled from Campo Florido, the total cost of the cylinder amounted to approximately 80 dollars, including the price of the gas, the service, and the rental of the transportation.
The complainant directly questioned the company: "Does the liquefied gas company not have enough staff to manage a distribution schedule based on the number of people during those times, in order to avoid these crowds and schedule everyone for the same day and time?"
Yohandry Machado confirmed in the comments that he was at the same spot that day: "I arrived at 10 in the morning and left at 4 in the afternoon, a tremendous lack of respect and in the blazing sun, yet another way to crush us and hurt us even more."
The incident reveals a contradiction in the distribution system: while several users reported receiving gas at home without issues, the product listing in SuperMarket23 indicates that liquefied gas is marked as “available for pickup only,” forcing buyers to travel to the designated location.
Leyrossell Ley summarized the confusion: "They don't tell you that when you're buying it; they tell you after they've taken the money."
The 10 kg cylinder is sold for 29 dollars, which is equivalent to about 15,660 Cuban pesos at the informal exchange rate, plus a service charge of 3.23 dollars according to Clara Luisa Calvo García.
The situation is mirrored in other areas of Havana: Lazara Celeiro reported the same crowding in La Lisa, where "it seemed like it was the gas from the ration book."
Benítez Cordero also pointed to the root of the problem: "Something that has to be bought by a relative abroad because it is sold in a currency that is not the one the country pays."
Since May 2026, platforms like SuperMarket23 and Katapulk began selling liquefied gas in dollars in Havana, operating under a scheme of exchanging an empty cylinder for a full one, effectively dollarizing an essential good.
The initial inventory sold out within a few hours after the launch, which forced the platform to reorganize its logistics.
By April 2026, more than 50% of the 1.7 million liquefied gas customers in Cuba were unable to make purchases during regular distributions, according to data from the context of the energy crisis affecting the island.
Taymi Mena Driggs captured the sentiment of many Cubans without access to foreign currency: "Those of us without dollars will never cook with gas again. Like many other Cubans, I toil from dawn to dusk, and in the end, I have to cook with firewood after a long day as if we were still living in 1492."
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