A resident of Isla de la Juventud bought a tube of ground meat at a bipime for 700 Cuban pesos and upon opening it, found the meat completely spoiled: with a foul smell, a greenish color, and fermented, according to a video posted on TikTok this past Sunday by the user Yanet Diary (@el.diario70).
The author does not directly blame the vendors, but rather the blackouts plaguing the area. “It’s not so much the vendors as the lack of electricity that is mostly to blame, because they only provide power for two hours a day every eight hours,” she explains in the video.
When puncturing the tube in front of the camera, the contents came out fermented and appeared spoiled, direct evidence of the complete break in the cold chain. "Look at its condition; it has a terrible odor and even looks green," Yanet describes while showing the product.
The electrical situation in the Isle of Youth has been steadily deteriorating. In February 2026, the territory operated under a schedule of four hours with power and four hours without, but by the end of May, the power outages reached 18 hours a day due to a lack of fuel for its local generators, which operate independently from the National Electric System.
Geographic isolation worsens the crisis even further. The author notes that the Island of Youth "depends on a ferry once a week for people to enter and exit to meet their needs," and at the time of the recording, the ferry was not operational. The ferry Perseverancia was suspended indefinitely in November 2024 while improvements were made to the access channel from Batabanó, and in February 2026, there was another suspension due to unfavorable hydrometeorological conditions.
In light of that situation, Yanet wonders how many neighbors depended on that ground meat as their only source of food. "Just imagine how many people can do nothing and that this was their only salvation for the day," she laments.
This case is not isolated. The pattern of spoiled food distributed in Cuba is recurrent and documented in multiple provinces: rotten picadillo delivered to children in Santiago de Cuba following Hurricane Melissa in November 2025, moldy rice in Bayamo in December 2025, peas mixed with insects and stones in Matanzas in April 2026, and rotten eggs offered to a pregnant woman in Santiago de Cuba in March 2026.
Yanet's question encapsulates the desperation of thousands of Cubans: "Where have we ended up?"
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