A Cuban who posts on TikTok as @meliii_rh showed this week a real purchase at the agricultural fair in her village, and the outcome left many speechless: 21,060 Cuban pesos spent on basic household products.
"Today it was time to do the grocery shopping for the house, so I'm taking them with me to see the real prices," the young woman explained at the beginning of the video, published last Sunday.
The list included ten pounds of rice (2,200 pesos), three pounds of tomatoes (800), three pounds of black beans (1,050), three pounds of red beans (1,110), four pounds of ground beef (3,200), four pounds of pork chops (3,820), a jar of onions and one of lemons (300 each), ten bananas (400), a carton of eggs (3,600), a package of chicken (2,600), two lemon sodas (800), and a can of condensed milk (600).
“As always, the fair was filled with people looking for the best deals. Even though I live in a small town, you can find everything: tubers, grains, vegetables, meats, and much more,” he noted.
At the current informal exchange rate —600 pesos per dollar, a new historical high reached on June 3 in the Cuban informal market— the 21,060 pesos amount to just about 35 dollars.
The figure is devastating when contrasted with the Cuban state average salary of 6,930 pesos per month, according to data from the National Office of Statistics and Information released in April.
This means that this single purchase —excluding other monthly expenses— exceeds more than three times the monthly income of an average state worker.
The outlook is even bleaker when considering that covering basic needs in Cuba requires around 96,060 pesos per month, according to estimates from a Cuban economist published this Thursday, which is equivalent to about 14 times the average salary.
The trend of documenting purchases on social media has emerged as a way to highlight the crisis. A report from Wednesday showed that with 60,000 pesos, prices remain insufficient to curb the increase, and another report from May revealed that with 30,000 pesos a family was barely able to buy meat and bread.
The Cuban Vice President Salvador Valdés Mesa acknowledged in February that "with 6,000 pesos it is not possible to live due to high prices," an admission that has not been accompanied by any effective measures to alleviate the situation.
Meliza closed her video with a question that summarizes the daily anguish of millions of Cubans: "Does this seem like a lot or a little for all of this?"
Filed under: