A Cuban farmer named Andrés Manuel Sosa Ramírez publicly reported having received a fine of 200,000 pesos for having his cattle on idle land, in a video on Facebook that went viral and amassed over 13 million views.
"200,000 pesos in fines because my cattle are growing on idle lands. Is that bad or good? I have no other offenses," stated Sosa Ramírez, a phrase that starkly summarizes the logic of the Cuban agricultural system: penalizing a producer not for destroying or stealing cattle, but for keeping them alive and growing.
"It is abusive, and there are over 200 acres of land lost where I live," he lamented.
According to him, the intention of the Agriculture Delegation is to seize the livestock. "How long will this injustice continue in this country?" he expressed.
This is not the first time that the same producer has faced a sanction of this kind. In May 2026, Sosa Ramírez had already reported a fine of 60,000 pesos imposed by the CENCOP (National Center for Livestock Control) due to an alleged "age discrepancy" in his animals.
The legal framework that enables these sanctions is Decree 70/2022 of the Council of Ministers, approved in August 2022, which updated the sanctions regime regarding the control and registration of large livestock.
Under this regulation, failing to declare births, deaths, or missing livestock incurs a fine of 10,000 pesos for each animal; not updating registration information carries a penalty of 20,000 pesos; and possessing unregistered livestock may result in a fine of up to 20,000 pesos per head, along with the confiscation of the animal.
This pressure is compounded by Resolution 20/2025 from the Ministry of Finance and Prices, which establishes a tax on the idleness of agricultural and forest lands: if the farmer does not use the land, they pay a tax; if they use it for livestock without properly updated records, they also incur a penalty.
The paradox becomes more evident when comparing the figures. In March 2026, the government set a maximum price of 75 pesos per kilogram for first-category bulls through Agreement 9845 of the Council of Ministers, which amounts to only 37,500 pesos gross for a 500-kilogram animal—a fraction of the 200,000 pesos fine that Sosa Ramírez faces.
This case does not occur in a vacuum. Cuba has lost more than 900,000 head of cattle since 2019, and by the end of 2024, the national herd was only about three million animals, nearly 400,000 less than the previous year.
In 2024, there were 58,963 cattle deaths and 7,143 illegal slaughters across the country. In Villa Clara, more than 15,000 cattle died just in August 2025.
A national inspection conducted between March 2024 and January 2025 identified 181,854 irregularities in the management of the Cuban cattle stock, highlighting the extent of the structural disorder acknowledged by the regime itself.
In response to this productive collapse, the government's answer has not been to incentivize those who manage to maintain and grow their livestock, but rather to apply more controls, more bureaucracy, and more fines.
Another Cuban farmer summarized the situation in April 2026 with a phrase that also circulated widely: "They steal from me, and yet they are the owners," referring to the position of the authorities when a producer loses animals to theft, and the State still demands accountability.
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