A young Cuban identified on TikTok as Anni (@annilacubanita_97) documented in a video what can be purchased in food in Cuba with 10,000 Cuban pesos, an amount that exceeds the current minimum monthly wage on the island.
The recording, published on April 28, shows a visit to a small market near her home that the young woman describes as relatively well-stocked: it had minced meat, chicken breast, hamburgers, sausages, pork chops, canned food, and grains like beans and chickpeas.
However, Anni quickly put what she was seeing into perspective: "I won't lie to you, everything is quite expensive, at least for the salary of an average worker, but I have a fee."
The term "fee" is the Cuban colloquialism used to refer to remittances in foreign currency that arrive from abroad, the only real way for millions of families on the island to access the market.
With those 10,000 pesos, the final purchase was modest: a carton of eggs, two packages of rice, a 10-pound package of chicken, and two cubes of chicken broth.
Regarding the rice, Anni was straightforward: "It's enough for a maximum of three days."
The chicken was the product he valued the most: "this package is quite generous," he said, in contrast to the rest of the purchase.
As the video came to an end, the young woman mixed disappointment with gratitude: "You feel a bit disappointed, to be honest, but there are many people who can't even afford these foods, so I feel very blessed."
The video is part of a sustained trend on TikTok where Cubans document their grocery purchases to highlight the gap between prices and salaries, a form of spontaneous social protest that has become commonplace on the platform.
The economic context surrounding that purchase is devastating. The official average salary in Cuba in 2025 was only 6,930 pesos per month, according to the National Office of Statistics and Information (ONEI), while the new minimum wage set since July 1, 2026 is 3,210 pesos, equivalent to about 4.65 dollars at the informal exchange rate.
This means that the 10,000 pesos from the video represent more than three minimum monthly salaries, and barely covered basic proteins and carbohydrates for a few days.
Independent estimates place the minimum cost of living in Cuba at around 96,000 pesos per month, of which approximately 70,000 would be allocated solely to food, a figure that makes any budget based exclusively on state income unviable.
The case of Anni is not isolated. On July 22, another Cuban showed on TikTok that with the entire monthly basic salary he could only buy five packs of rice, while in June a young woman documented what she obtained with just over 11,000 pesos: five pounds of pork, five of chicken, three of ground meat, a tube of processed meat, ten eggs, and five pounds of salt.
The official year-on-year inflation in Cuba reached 18.27% in June 2026, with the food group increasing by 4.29% in just that month and oil skyrocketing by nearly 15%.
The regime itself recently acknowledged that the new minimum wage does not meet basic needs of the population, an admission that confirms what Cubans like Anni have been documenting on camera for months.
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