A Cuban doctor residing on the island documented on TikTok what she was able to buy to prepare a caldosa, a traditional Cuban dish, and the result starkly reveals the price crisis the country is experiencing: the total purchase cost her 5,280 Cuban pesos, equivalent to almost an entire monthly salary of a healthcare professional.
In the video published on TikTok, the user @javiart08, who identifies as a doctor and mother of two children, details each product purchased: a bundle of beans (200 pesos), a cabbage (300 pesos), six plantains, both ripe and green (350 pesos), a piece of pumpkin (200 pesos), three ears of corn (180 pesos), a pound of sweet potato (200 pesos), and three pounds of taro (600 pesos).
The total cost of the ingredients for the caldosa came to 1,830 pesos. However, it was the last item on the list that drove up the expenditure.
"And a bag of milk for my baby, three thousand three hundred pesos," says the woman in the video, without dramatism.
That bag of milk accounted for 62.5% of the total expenditure and cost more than all the ingredients of the caldosa combined. The author herself summarizes the purchase with a phrase that says it all: "No filters, no drama — just real life in Cuba."
The total disbursement of 5,280 pesos is equivalent, at the current informal exchange rate of 600 pesos per dollar, a record high, to approximately 8.8 dollars. The author rounds it to "around ten dollars."
The data hits harder when crossed with salaries. A newly graduated doctor in Cuba earns about 5,060 pesos per month, and with a specialization or night shifts, this can rise to between 6,562 and 8,000 pesos. This means that documented purchases practically consume the entire monthly salary of a base-level doctor.
This is not the first time this same professional has highlighted the gap between income and prices. On May 11, she posted another video showing how she spent her 8,760 pesos monthly salary in a single day of basic purchases and photos for her baby.
The phenomenon is not isolated. Other Cubans have documented similar situations: a Cuban woman showed what she was able to buy with 10,000 pesos, and another recorded a grocery purchase for 30,000 pesos that barely covered the essentials.
The context is one of deep crisis. The powdered milk has reached a cost of up to 2,333 pesos for half a kilo in provinces like Ciego de Ávila. Rice has exceeded 400 pesos per pound, pushing many Cubans to substitute it with root vegetables such as cassava, sweet potato, and pumpkin, precisely the ingredients of the caldosa documented by this doctor.
The average state salary in Cuba is 6,930 pesos per month according to the National Office of Statistics and Information, while the basic grocery basket for two people in Havana exceeds 41,000 pesos per month according to independent estimates, meaning that a newly graduated doctor covers less than 20% of that cost with their salary.
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