A poet and troubadour from the province of Granma turned the bread crisis in Cuba into a décima that blends black humor, genuine despair, and political irony. Jorge Adrián Betancourt Quintana, known on social media as Sonny Carrazana Espinosa, posted a reel on Facebook lasting just over a minute in which he recites a piece about the disappearance of bread from Cuban daily life.
The poem begins with a statement that encapsulates the struggle of millions: "The bread is lost and I cry / like a child, my soul moans / knowing that in the Mipyme / there is bread, but at a price of gold." The "Mipyme" —a private store— emerges as the only place where bread exists, albeit at an unaffordable price for most.
The irony reaches its sharpest point when the poet blames the embargo for even canceling the emergency plan: "The blockade is so harmful / that it nullified our contract / for sweet potato flour / for an alternative bread." The mocking exaggeration is intentional: in the tradition of the Cuban décima espinela, humor serves as the scalpel with which reality is dissected.
What follows is a statement of almost existential dependence. “...Without bread, I cannot live, / I find myself sluggish and without a way out, / that little bread is my life, / it has become my three-in-one: / because it is my breakfast, / it is my lunch, it is my dinner,” recites the poet, brutally describing what regulated bread represents for those who have no access to anything else.
The closing of the poem presents a dreamlike image that blends tenderness and resignation: "I dream that one dawn, / while I sleep in my attic, / wrapped in its cellophane, / a loaf of crusty bread, / detaches from the height / and lands in my mouth: bread!"
Cuba needs approximately 20,000 tons of wheat flour monthly to ensure the bread for the regulated family basket, according to official figures. In June 2026, the Minister of Food Industry, Alberto López Díaz, acknowledged serious difficulties in receiving contracted shipments and reported that a shipment of 5,000 tons of flour was removed from a ship before it set sail.
The crisis is dragging along structural issues: as of February 2024, authorities reported that the Cienfuegos mill, the only one operational in the country at that time, was producing about 250 tons of flour daily, while the demand was 700 tons for regulated bread and other social consumption.
The official weight of the bread in the standardized family basket in Cuba was reduced from 80 to 60 grams on September 13, 2024, a measure taken by the authorities in response to the shortage of wheat flour. During 2026, journalistic reports indicated that in some provinces the portions were reduced to as little as 40 grams, and of very poor quality.
The food crisis is also reflected in the research conducted by the Food Monitor Program: its National Food Security Survey 2025 revealed that 94.9% of respondents had experienced some degree of loss in access to purchasing food over the past year
In this scenario, the comments on the reel reflect that laughter and tears go hand in hand. Several internet users appreciated that someone expressed in verses what they feel every morning in front of an empty bakery, while others denounced that resellers take the bread while mothers and the elderly wait under the sun, a reality that the poem does not name but that resonates beneath each verse.
Betancourt Quintana is not a casual improviser; he is an award-winning poet within the tradition of Cuban written décima, with honors such as the Célida Cortina Award from the National Ala Décima Competition and the Ibero-American Cucalambé Award, the highest accolade for this form on the island. His work combines the classic structure of the décima espinela with social and existential themes, and the viral reel is the most natural extension of that trajectory.
As he himself summarizes it, with the resignation of one who no longer expects miracles but still continues to dream: "I dream of your arrival / by sea, by land, or flying, / I dream and will keep dreaming, / for dreaming costs nothing."
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