A Cuban identified as Bárbaro Miranda Hernández posted a video on Facebook in which he shows a pumpkin that cost him 2,700 Cuban pesos and expresses his outrage against the system that is "starving the people."
"With the money this pumpkin cost me, you could buy the pumpkin patch, the owner of the pumpkin patch, and the cart they used to bring it," says Miranda Hernández in front of the camera, holding the vegetable. The video has garnered over 890,000 views.
What makes the testimony particularly devastating is the arithmetic that accompanies it: the minimum monthly salary in Cuba is 3,210 pesos since last July, equivalent to less than four dollars at the informal exchange rate. A pumpkin costing 2,700 pesos represents 84% of that salary, which means that an average Cuban worker would have to allocate almost their entire monthly income just to bring home one vegetable.
Miranda Hernández himself acknowledges that he can afford the expense, but emphasizes that this does not make it any less outrageous: "I can buy it, but the entire country cannot buy it; the country is dying of hunger."
His criticism is aimed directly at the political system: "They don’t want you to say that communism is crap. They don’t want you to say that this is crap, that this, wherever it has been implemented, has never worked."
In recent months, food prices in Cuba have reached unaffordable levels for most of the population: onions for 910 pesos each, oil priced between 4,000 and 6,000 pesos per liter, cartons of eggs between 3,000 and 4,500 pesos, and meat at 800 pesos per pound.
The official year-on-year inflation rate reached 28.44% in September, according to the National Office of Statistics and Information, but the category of food and non-alcoholic beverages increased by 42.66% during the same period, accounting for nearly three-quarters of the monthly variation in the price index.
Independent economists estimate that a person needs around 96,000 pesos per month to meet their basic needs, which is about 30 times the official minimum wage. The gap between income and prices continues to grow: the dollar in the informal market closed on October 31 at 890 pesos, setting a new historical record.
Behind the skyrocketing prices, there is also a decision by the regime: Resolution 150/2026 from the Ministry of Finance and Prices, which has been in effect since June 2026, eliminated the maximum price caps on several imported foods, which further fueled speculation and corruption in the market.
This is compounded by the structural collapse of Cuban agriculture: without enough seeds, fertilizers, fuel, or machinery, production costs are directly passed on to the consumer.
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