Alejandro Escalona Vega, owner of a small food stall called Alejo, located at the entrance of a private house, reported in a video posted on Facebook that three inspectors fined him a total of 48,000 pesos.
In a country where the minimum wage is 3,210 pesos, the young entrepreneur will have to pay 32,000 —almost 10 minimum wages— as the business owner, and an additional 16,000 for their worker due to not having a formalized contract.
Escalona recorded the moment and shared it on social media with a description that summarizes his outrage: “The inspectors came by to pocket 32 thousand pesos, plus a fine of 16 on my contracted worker, who is also retired. A country that attacks those at the bottom.”
In the video, one of the inspectors explains the legal basis for the penalties: "The individual is notified for not having an employment contract, and the employer is also notified for employing a person illegally."
The entrepreneur replied that no previous document had indicated the need to modify that contract, and that new demands arise each month: “They create laws here every day to make life difficult for the self-employed, that is well known.”
Escalona also questioned the logic of the banking system imposed by the regime itself: "Deposit 100 thousand pesos into the card, 100 thousand pesos. And you will withdraw it here, at this bank. That's a lie, I can't withdraw it. I am not a king with access to places to withdraw money."
What the video does not say, but is obvious to the thousands of Cubans who have seen it, is the stark physical contrast between the inspectors—clearly well-fed compared to the average of a population suffering from chronic scarcity—and the reality of those around them. Comments on social media quickly pointed this out.
A survey conducted by the Food Monitor Program and Cuido60 in May 2026 revealed that 33.9% of Cuban households reported that at least one member went to bed without eating during the past year.
The case of Escalona is not isolated. According to an investigation by elTOQUE, fines have become a systematic mechanism for tax collection at the expense of the private sector.
At the end of the first quarter of 2025, the regime had imposed 425,012 fines, contributing over 1 billion pesos to the state budget. By July of that year, the total had risen to more than 661,000 fines and 2,177 million pesos collected.
The structural incentive of this offensive was revealed in December 2024, when the government announced that it would pay inspectors "based on results", tying their compensation to the number and amount of penalties imposed.
In April 2026, a viral complaint revealed that inspectors admitted to issuing fines even when no actual infraction existed to meet internal revenue goals.
The backdrop is an erratic pricing policy that has resolved nothing: the regime set price caps on six basic products in July 2024, adjusted them in 2025, reinstated them in September of that year, and partially eliminated them in July 2026 through Decree 156, which removed the caps on rice, chicken, oils, and powdered milk. Inflation and hunger remain unaddressed.
While inspectors oversee every contract of a retiree in a neighborhood portal, the military conglomerate GAESA —which controls between 40% and 70% of the formal Cuban economy, including tourism, keys, commerce, and natural resources— operates without verifiable independent audits and does not publish financial statements, beyond any ordinary fiscal oversight.
Escalona was summoned to appear at the Inspection Directorate's office, with a deadline of five business days to appeal the sanctions. His conclusion in the video anticipates the outcome: "I'm not going to resolve anything".
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