A troubadour from Ranchuelo, a municipality in Villa Clara, turned the oil crisis in Cuba into a décima that has already surpassed one million views.
Yordan Quintero, known on social media as El Yayito Ranchuelero, denounced in verse and with rhythm that a liter of oil has reached a price of 3,500 Cuban pesos in his town, and the video, published by the Facebook page D' Canturía, has garnered over 1.1 million views, 51,372 likes, and 1,527 comments.
The central verse of the song leaves no room for doubt: "The price skyrocketed, and I can't control myself; a liter of oil alone cost 3,500. I don't know who came up with such outrageous excesses. Those 3,500... if we do the math right, that would have bought us 70 liters at 50 pesos."
The calculation made by the artist suddenly encapsulates the magnitude of the collapse: what used to suffice for seventy liters now barely covers one.
The surge in prices that inspired the composition has a clear turning point: Resolution 150/2026 from the Ministry of Finance and Prices, published on June 20, 2026, which eliminated the national caps on imported cooking oils and revoked the previous limit of 990 pesos per liter.
Since then, the price has been continuously rising: from about 1,500 pesos in April, it went up to 2,000 in June, to 2,500 in Havana in July, and to between 4,000 and 5,000 pesos in some areas during August.
In Sancti Spíritus, the price of a liter jumped from 2,000 to 3,000 pesos in less than 24 hours.
In response to the escalation, several municipal governments reacted by setting local price caps with varying amounts: Villa Clara set the maximum at 2,500 pesos on August 8, Guantánamo at 2,200 pesos on August 5, and Pinar del Río at 2,150 pesos on Tuesday, which is the lowest price among the territories that implemented controls.
The policy is openly contradictory: the regime liberalized prices in June, and less than two months later, the municipalities reinstated price caps, each with a different figure.
Economist Pedro Monreal summarized the situation harshly: "176 measures and only one achievement: to show that they have learned nothing."
The Cuban government also acknowledged that it has not distributed oil through the rationing book at any point in 2026, leaving the population completely exposed to informal market prices.
The décima from Yayito Ranchuelero adds to a wave of viral content that uses humor to portray the crisis.
A young man known as El Burla kept his bottle of oil in a safe to illustrate the value that the product has acquired.
In 2020, the official price of refined soybean oil was 48.75 pesos per liter in CIMEX stores.
Today, that same liter can cost more than the monthly minimum pension of thousands of Cubans, which is set at 4,000 pesos, equivalent to less than eight dollars.
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