A Cuban resident in Baracoa, Guantánamo, shared a video on Facebook that depicts the crisis of purchasing power on the island: with 8,500 Cuban pesos she was only able to fill a bag with basic products without any main dish.
Karla NavOs detailed the purchase before the camera: five heads of garlic (250 pesos), three pounds of beans (1,950), ten pounds of rice (4,100), two pounds of salt (360), five pounds of sweet potato (400), two avocados (500), and a bunch of plantains (350). The young woman stated that she had 438 pesos left and that the bags cost 20 pesos.
"And that's it, my people, this is all I could buy, nothing for the main course," he noted.
The 8,500 pesos exceed the average state monthly salary in Cuba, which is at 7,354 pesos as of August 2026, according to data from the National Office of Statistics and Information (ONEI). This means that an average worker would not be able to afford even that basket without animal protein for an entire month's salary. And this Thursday, the dollar reached 928 pesos in the Cuban informal market.
"A sad reality that a full month's salary for a worker goes to that little bit of food, it’s hard to believe, only a Cuban understands," commented one Cuban. Another pointed out that the situation in his area is even worse: "With that, here I can only afford a bottle of oil, one kilogram of milk, and if I put in 20, I can get a pound of rice and another pound of beans."
The national minimum wage, raised to 3,210 pesos since July 2026, would barely cover 40% of the purchase shown in the video, without including any type of meat, eggs, or dairy products.
The economist Javier Pérez Capdevila estimated that a person needs at least 96,060 pesos per month to cover their basic needs, a figure that amounts to about 13 times the average state salary.
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