A nurse residing in Guantánamo posted a video on Facebook that has garnered nearly 138,000 views, in which she sarcastically comments on the impossibility of surviving on the 4,000 Cuban pesos she managed to earn after a month of work, comparing her situation to that of the children's character "La cucarachita Martina."
Ana Ivis Vázquez explains that she was only able to withdraw 40% of her salary from the magnetic card — a problem faced by thousands of Cubans due to the cash shortage in the banking system — and that money is not even enough to buy the most basic food items.
"I spent a whole month working for 4,000 pesos," says the woman, a mother of two teenagers, with a mix of irony and desperation.
The nurse precisely outlines the prices of food in Guantánamo to highlight the gap between her income and the cost of living.
"What can I buy to live, as a mother of two teenagers, when a five-pound package of chicken costs 4,500? When a pound of rice costs 380, a bottle of oil costs 2,700, and a pound of sugar costs 550 pesos? So, what will I buy?" she asks.
The situation worsens when she adds the daily expenses for her children: each loaf of bread costs between 140 and 180 pesos, not to mention having to give them 50 pesos each day for snacks at school. That alone, multiplied by a month, far exceeds the 4,000 pesos she managed to withdraw.
"The numbers don't add up for me. I don't know how I'm going to save money; I don't know how I'm going to manage to stretch these 4,000 pesos until next month," she admits.
"We do magic. With this, we make magic. I don't know if it happens to you, but... Give me options. Let's see what I can do with this salary," concludes Ana Ivis Vázquez, in a closing statement that encapsulates the frustration of thousands of healthcare workers in Cuba.
Vázquez's testimony reflects a crisis that the government has been unable to resolve with salary increases.
The Resolution 17/2026 of the Ministry of Labor, in effect since July and paid from August, set the base salary for a basic nurse at 4,755 pesos and for a specialist at 7,045 pesos.
However, the nominal increase does not hold up when contrasted with the reality of the informal market, where the monthly cost of the basic basket is estimated to be over 100,000 pesos per month for one person, according to calculations by Javier Pérez Capdevila, a Doctor of Economic Sciences.
At the informal exchange rate of approximately 828 pesos per dollar recorded on Friday, the maximum salary of a basic nurse amounts to just 8.49 dollars a month.
The irony that circulated on Cuban social media following the announcement of the salary increase starkly captured the popular sentiment: with the new salary, workers "would now be able to buy a carton of eggs and oil in the same month."
This exodus of purchasing power corresponds with the exodus of personnel: Cuba went from 106,131 doctors in 2021 to 75,364 in 2024, a loss of over 30,000 professionals in three years. In total, the Cuban healthcare system lost about 77,522 workers during that period, according to data from the National Statistics Office.
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