The Cuban musician Dagoberto Pedraja went out this Saturday to buy food for his sick wife at the Línea and L agricultural fair in Vedado, Havana, and reported that a vendor tried to charge him 910 pesos for a single onion.
Pedroja, almost 70 years old, rejected the price and continued down K Street to a vendor whom the neighbors nickname "the criminal" due to his high prices. There, he managed to buy the same onion for 400 pesos, along with a chili pepper for 300 and two potatoes for 310.
"That is to say, the guy at the 'fair' was charging me what 'the criminal' gave me for less... What's up with 'the Fair'?", the musician wrote on Facebook, where his post received numerous reactions.
The experience fell far short of the promotion made by the neighborhood representative, who had presented the fair as "the best of the best." Subsequent comments from other residents of Havana described even higher prices.
A user claimed that they were charged 2,100 pesos for a single onion, while another asserted that they paid 2,145 pesos for two. In Playa, according to comments, the price reaches 1,800 pesos per pound, while at the market on Street 13, it is offered at 1,500.
The testimonies also mentioned other prices. Four small peppers cost 500 pesos, and a cachucha pepper was sold for 350 pesos.
"The pound of onion is at 1,370 pesos, we overwhelm each other without mercy, I cook with magic powders," wrote a commenter.
Another person summarized the impact on daily food with a more straightforward phrase: "Here, the onion is at 1,500... I've already crossed it off my menu."
Several participants pointed out that independent vendors are joining official markets and setting prices that differ from those agreed upon between the municipal government and authorized sellers.
According to the Provincial Delegation of Agriculture in Havana, the approved price for dry onions at the capital's markets was 180 pesos per pound.
The difference between that official price and the amounts reported by consumers has exposed a gap that, for the participants in the discussion, turns the fair promoted by the authorities into yet another pressure point on the wallet.
"Cuban Dubai. The opportunists feeling the texture with glass powder," summarized one of the commentators.
Perdraja concluded his publication with an irony that several commentators, some of whom were seniors, immediately recognized: "We have to eat and the fault is with the Yankees. I'm almost 70 and I've been hearing the same thing since I was a teenager."
The episode takes place in a context of inflation that reached 20.70% year-on-year in July, with food prices increasing by 26.36% annually, according to the National Office of Statistics and Information.
The official average monthly salary in Cuba is just 6,930 pesos, about 10 dollars at the informal exchange rate. At the beginning of this month, a Cuban content creator demonstrated that making a typical lunch costs around 2,950 pesos, nearly half of that monthly salary.
The Council of Ministers recently updated the agricultural marketing regulations through Decree 161, published in the Official Gazette on September 9, which allows prices to be set by agreement between the parties and effectively removes the regulatory floor for consumers.
Journalists from the official newspaper Invasor, based in Ciego de Ávila, acknowledged in August that the price controls in Cuba have always been "dead letters": published regulations that never manifested in the actual markets.
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