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The official newspaper Invasor from Ciego de Ávila has the answer: the blame lies with the U.S. embargo. This was published this Friday with utmost seriousness, attributing the "tightening of the economic, financial, and commercial blockade by the current U.S. administration" as the reason why the Company of Dairy Products of Ciego de Ávila only receives 15% of the expected cow's milk for its daily industrial processing plan.
In concrete numbers: the entity receives between 4,800 and 5,000 liters daily out of the 33,700 planned, as acknowledged by Daniel Moll Espinosa, the business director of the company, to the state media itself.
But between the lines of the same article, the true reasons for the disaster emerge, almost unintentionally: a fuel deficit, prolonged blackouts, a shortage of parts for transport trucks, a lack of refrigeration that acidifies milk before it reaches the warehouses, and an accumulated debt of 13 million pesos to the agricultural and cooperative sector, which has gone unpaid for months for their work. Of course, it's all Trump's fault.
The planned distribution in the municipalities of Ciego de Ávila and Morón is every three days, but consumers often go more than six days without receiving their allotted supplies. And what they receive isn’t much: children aged one to two are given a "pomo" which, as Moll Espinosa clarified, "does not exactly mean one liter of food, as it amounts to 0.917 milliliters." Those aged two to six, pregnant women, and individuals on medical diets are entitled to half a pomo, "as long as fuel allocation and other factors that often affect distribution permit it."
The phrase deserves to be repeated: half a bottle of milk for a child, as long as there is fuel.
For babies from zero to one year old, the solution is imported powdered milk. In May, they distributed three bags of 600 grams. The regime has been unable to produce enough milk for decades, and in 2024 it had to request help from the UN to ensure that minimum supply.
The Minister of Food Industry, Alberto López Díaz, acknowledged on June 5 before the Mesa Redonda that more than 100,000 children in Cuba do not receive their daily milk and that the official plan—powdered milk for 331,000 children and liquid milk for 200,000—is not being fulfilled. The sector accumulated losses of over 450 million dollars in 2025.
The historical irony is undeniable. On July 26, 2007, in Camagüey, Raúl Castro emphasized that Cuba should produce enough milk for "everyone who wants to have a glass." Nearly 19 years later, that promise remains the most enduring symbol of governmental failure. An internet user summed it up accurately upon learning of the new official promise of "electricity sovereignty by 2050": "We've been waiting 20 years for the glass of milk that Raúl was supposed to provide."
Meanwhile, the official press itself reported in 2025 that in Camagüey —the country's main milk-producing region— hundreds of producers had not delivered a single glass of milk for the year, and that 36% of those contracted were failing to meet their goals. The causes identified by Granma included poor livestock management, theft and illegal slaughter of cows, unpaid debts, and a loss of livestock culture. None of these causes can be attributed to Trump.
In the face of collapse, the dairy company from Avila found a creative solution: selling croquettes, bread, sweets, and pizzas to generate income. A dairy factory transformed into a bakery-pizzeria is perhaps the most accurate metaphor for the state of the Cuban economy.
One day before the text appeared in Invasor, Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz presented before the National Assembly a package of 176 economic measures that includes opening up to private capital in agriculture: the implicit acknowledgment that the centralized state model, which has been promising glasses of milk for 67 years, has not worked. In the informal market of Ciego de Ávila, half a kilogram of powdered milk reached a price of 2,333 pesos in April 2026. According to Invasor, the blame lies with Washington.
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