A young Cuban resident on the island set out to answer a simple yet revealing question: what can you buy in Cuba for the same amount of money that a fast food hamburger costs in the United States? The outcome, documented in a video published on Tuesday on TikTok, has turned into a stark portrayal of the economic crisis facing the island.
The content creator @editsemanuel_2 exchanged 5 dollars at the informal rate and received 3,300 Cuban pesos (CUP). With this amount, he went to the market with a clear goal: to fill a bag with food to feed himself, his little sister, and his mom.
"I converted those five dollars to Cuban pesos, and for that, I received three thousand three hundred pesos, and I left with a single objective: to fill this bag with only that money," he explained in the video.
The first thing he tried to buy was bacon, but the price forced him to reconsider. "The bacon is fourteen hundred pesos," the seller informed him. Just one pound would have consumed almost half of his total budget, so he ruled out that option and looked for more cost-effective alternatives.
In the end, with the 3,300 CUP he managed to gather: a package of rice (750 CUP), six sausages at 100 CUP each, a pound of mortadella (500 CUP), two cucumbers at 70 CUP each, ten eggs at 110 CUP each, and three bananas at 70 CUP each. "With each product, the bag got heavier, but the money disappeared even faster," he acknowledged.
The money ran out completely. "All the money is gone, there is absolutely nothing left," he said at the end of the tour.
What the video illustrates goes beyond a shopping list. At the informal exchange rate of 673 CUP per dollar on that day, the 3,300 pesos equate to less than five dollars. This amount is, in turn, practically equal to the monthly minimum wage in Cuba, which is set at 3,210 CUP since July 1, 2026, meaning that a Cuban worker earns in a month what an American spends on a single fast-food meal.
The official average salary is around 6,930 CUP per month, about 10 dollars at the informal exchange rate. Economists estimate that meeting the basic needs of a single person in Cuba requires around 96,000 CUP per month, which is about 14 times that average salary.
The author himself noted the increase in the prices of basic foods during his journey: "Rice has skyrocketed," he commented while showing the package he bought for 750 CUP.
This type of experiment has become a trend on TikTok among Cubans who document their real purchasing power. With 10,000 CUP, another Cuban showed a similarly limited purchase just days earlier, and in January, a young man did the same with 5,000 pesos with similar results.
The video garnered over 219,000 views and 21,500 likes in under 24 hours, with hundreds of comments from Cubans who recognized the reality depicted. The author concluded the experiment with a phrase that summarizes the disparity: "Different prices, different countries, but above all, different realities."
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