"I know that by recording this video I'm not going to gain anything. I will be just another person uploading a claim for someone's rights. But this is already maddening," a young woman from Cienfuegos expressed.
The trigger was the price of rice: a bag that just three days ago cost between 900 and 950 pesos has reached 1,100 pesos this week.
“There is no life in this country, there is no life. Money is not enough, everything rises every day, it rises, it rises, it rises, there is no limit, there is nothing,” denounced Elizabeth Amador on Facebook.
According to what he said, the hamburgers have also increased: three units for the day's meal now cost 150 pesos each, whereas they previously ranged around 120 or 130 pesos.
The price surge has a specific regulatory origin. The regime removed the national price cap on rice in July through Decree 156/2026, signed by Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz on June 29, without immediately establishing a replacement limit. Since then, the cereal is sold between 390 and 500 pesos per pound in various provinces, and in one-kilogram bags, it reaches 1,100 to 1,300 pesos in areas like Las Tunas, Matanzas, Ciego de Ávila, and Isla de la Juventud.
The minimum wage in Cuba is 3,210 pesos per month, which means that a single bag of rice can consume between 28% and 34% of the minimum income for an entire month. Economist Javier Pérez Capdevila estimated in a study published in June 2026 that a person needs about 96,000 pesos per month to cover their basic needs, nearly thirty times that minimum wage. Since then, the Cuban peso has lost value against the dollar.
Amador not only complained about the price of food. In his home, there is no water, and power outages are part of the daily landscape. "Here in my house, I don't have water; I just had to fetch a bit of water now. And that's how it is. It's work and work, and people no longer know where to invent, where to look," he recounted.
According to data from the National Institute of Hydraulic Resources, 2,681,770 Cubans —34.5% of the population— experienced interruptions in their water supply at the beginning of this month, largely as a direct consequence of power outages, since 87% of aqueducts depend on the electrical grid to pump water.
Others Cubans have started to substitute rice with cassava and root vegetables due to the inability to afford the grain, while a recent survey indicated that 33.9% of households had at least one member who went to bed hungry in the past month.
«Every day in this world I ask God to help the Cuban people because truly, with all these things that have us like this, so much, so much stress, we are going to lose our minds», the young woman expressed in the video.
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