Cuba Without Remittances from Abroad: “Everything Goes to Food”

Getting by without help from abroad requires much effort in today’s Cuba’s, whether in matters of health or basic necessities like food.

By Amado Viera

HAVANA TIMES – At 62 years old, Professor Mirta doesn’t even consider the possibility of retiring. If she did, she would have to depend exclusively on her pension, which, after 44 years as a primary school teacher, will barely exceed 4,800 pesos per month (less than 14 dollars at the informal market exchange rate, the only one that ordinary citizens can realistically access).

That’s why, at the beginning of this year, she started the process of “recontracting.” This administrative formula allows Cuban workers to retire and then be rehired in the same position they previously held. For many, this represents an opportunity to receive two “salaries,” as they can add their pension to their original salary. For employers, it helps maintain their workforce with experienced workers, which is becoming increasingly difficult due to the country’s demographic crisis (between 15% and 20% of Cubans have emigrated in the last five years, and around 25% of the population is 60 or older).

Education is one of the sectors with the largest labor shortage. Up to a third of classrooms lack a full-time teacher. “Teachers from before,” like Mirta, are particularly valued by parents for their ethics and professionalism. As compensation for their low salaries, parents often give them gifts or help them with various errands. That’s how Mirta was able to find a dentist for her granddaughter’s orthodontic treatment, and a year ago, a student’s father repaired her television.

“These favors are just as important as my salary, or even more so,” she admitted. But Mirta knows they depend on her continuing to teach. “Once retired, I’d become one of those many elderly women that nobody remembers, starting with the Ministry of Education itself,” she added.

Her salaries and everything she “arranges” contribute to the family budget. Mirta shares her home with her daughter, son-in-law, and 11-year-old granddaughter. All three adults are professionals: in the living room of their home, Mirta’s pedagogy degree is displayed alongside her daughter’s architecture degree and her son-in-law’s civil engineering degree. Together, they usually earn between 40,000 and 50,000 pesos per month (equivalent to about 120-150 dollars on the informal market), to which they add the occasional income her son-in-law makes doing masonry work.

“And practically all of it goes to food. Other than that, our only expenses are clothes for the girl and urgent repairs,” Mirta said.

Mirta lives in Camagüey, a provincial capital where food isn’t as expensive as in the eastern part of the island, nor as scarce as in smaller, more isolated towns. She also benefits from owning a “capitalist era” house she inherited from her parents, which she will one day pass on to her daughter.

The house, with three bedrooms, is located in a relatively central neighborhood of the city. Built in the 1950s—hence the “capitalist” label—it was constructed with quality materials and by experienced builders. In fact, “capitalist houses” are among the most sought-after in the Cuban real estate market. For Mirta, it also means she doesn’t have to worry about costly, nearly impossible repairs in today’s economy. “If we had to fix walls and ceilings, or build an extension like so many people do, our money wouldn’t be enough for anything. Luckily, these houses were built properly, and they just need a fresh coat of paint once a year.”

Budgets That Don’t Add Up

Mirta’s family is one of the many in Cuba that manage their daily expenses without remittances from abroad. While there are no definitive statistics, the most credible estimates suggest that between 50% and 60% of Cuban families don’t have close relatives abroad whom they can turn to for help in exceptional circumstances or on a regular basis.

This reality varies by region. “In Havana, almost everyone has a child or grandchild abroad, and the same goes for cities like Matanzas and Cienfuegos because of tourism. But as you move away from the capital, things change. At my job, most of the packages we send go to the western part of the country,” said Aldo, an employee of a private parcel agency with a branch in Camagüey. In that central-eastern city, the company manages with just five electric tricycles for deliveries, while its main office in Havana operates a fleet of at least 20 vehicles, including several vans.

Due to shortages of food, medicine, and other essential goods, the number of parcels sent by emigrants to their relatives in Cuba has increased exponentially in recent years. In December, the Ministry of Transport’s Director of Cargo, Pablo Cuellar Gonzalez, announced that state-owned companies handling these shipments would close 2024 having processed about three million parcels—700,000 more than in 2023 and nearly double the amount from a couple of years ago.

The trend suggests this phenomenon will continue to grow, which has encouraged private businesses like Aldo’s. One of the most unusual shipments he recalls was a surgical kit he had to deliver urgently to the province’s largest hospital, where they were waiting for it to operate on a patient. “The real problem is for those who don’t have family or friends abroad to help them in such a situation,” he lamented.

Getting by without external aid requires tremendous effort in Cuba’s current context, whether in matters of health or basic necessities like food. Between 2023 and 2024 alone, the cost of the basic food basket increased by 18%, according to economist Omar Everleny Pérez Villanueva, former director of the Center for the Study of the Cuban Economy at the University of Havana.

Using official statistics, the researcher determined that at the end of 2024, a household of two people needed 24,351 pesos per month to cover basic nutritional needs. In contrast, the average monthly salary was pegged at 4,648 pesos—much less than half of that amount.

“This is a very conservative estimate that only includes the bare minimum for survival,” Perez acknowledged in a later interview with the EFE news agency. “If we add other expenses like transportation, internet, clothing, and personal hygiene, the minimum monthly budget needed for two people rises to 45,401 pesos,” he added—practically ten times the official average salary.

The researcher also admits that his estimates rely on incomplete and biased data. The National Office of Statistics and Information, the entity responsible for providing this data, still fails to account for all economic transactions in the country and bases its analyses on the official exchange rate (120 pesos per dollar), which represents only a third of the actual value of the US dollar on the informal market.

In the “real world,” for most Cuban families, balancing the monthly budget is a juggling act that more and more people fail to achieve.

One such person is Mariano, an 82-year-old former railway mechanic who relies on a community soup kitchen “just to stay alive.” He is one of the 59,000 beneficiaries of the Family Assistance System (SAF), a national network of cafeterias and small neighborhood soup kitchens that provide low-cost meals to the elderly, disabled, and other vulnerable people every day at lunchtime. Otherwise, most of them wouldn’t be able to afford even one daily meal.

That is the case for Mariano and his wife, who never had children and are among the more than 700,000 retirees receiving the minimum pension of 1,528 pesos per month (40% of all pensioners fall into this category). While the government claims to be “focused on improving their living conditions,” recent policies have instead aimed at reducing the budget deficit by cutting subsidies and social assistance. For instance, SAF meal program slots have decreased by 22% since 2021.

To enroll in SAF, Mariano and his wife had to wait nearly a year until spots became available. In the meantime, he collected recyclable materials and did gardening work. Others, in poorer health, resort to small street sales or outright begging. Younger people have it somewhat easier—but only to a certain extent.

When incomes are insufficient, and there are no relatives or friends abroad, eating three meals a day can become a luxury, and a well-earned retirement after a lifetime of work can be indefinitely postponed. It doesn’t matter how much one has contributed in life.

Read more from Cuba here on Havana Times.