The Economy in Cuba: Everyone for Themselves
HAVANA TIMES – In Cuba, inflation isn’t an abstract concept from an economics textbook. It’s a corrosive force that has become the main topic of family conversations and that empties pantries. The average salary hovers around 4,000 Cuban pesos (CUP). ($10 USD) A few years ago, that was enough to get by. Today, it’s a cruel joke.
A liter of oil can cost 1,000 CUP on the informal market. A chicken, 3,500 CUP, and a simple carton of 30 eggs, another 3,500. Doing the math is a daily exercise in terror: a month’s wages aren’t enough to fill the fridge, not even once a month. The ration book — once a symbol of equality in lean times — is now a catalog of nostalgia. It offers a tiny portion of the basics, at subsidized prices, but even that’s insufficient to sustain the fiction of a decent diet.
Meanwhile, people have developed a sixth sense for spotting a product that’s “just come off the boat” (meaning, sent from abroad). The whisper travels through the streets and neighborhoods: “There’s chicken on the corner,” “Soap arrived, hurry before it runs out.” And then, the line — that national pastime — forms almost reflexively, an act of survival. Inflation has broken the value of work. What’s the point of being a doctor, an engineer, or a teacher if your salary is worthless? Professional dignity has been devalued along with the currency.
Facing the collapse of the peso’s value, the government — in a move both pragmatic and traumatic — opened the door to dollarization. The Tiendas de Recuperación de Divisas (TRD) and later the magnetic dollar MLC stores became the new temples where only those with hard currency (dollars or euros) can buy. Dollars and euros now coexist in a parallel country: food, appliances, medicine, spare parts, and more — a world of relative abundance but forbidden to most.
Cuba has split in two: the national peso economy and the dollar economy. Those who receive remittances from abroad, work in tourism, or run private businesses serving foreigners live in an economy connected to the world. Their reality is stressful, yes, but they have access to goods. They can buy chicken, powdered milk, shoes, and other basic items and services. Their anxiety is keeping the flow of hard currency alive.
Ordinary Cubans — those who have only the national currency, the vast majority — state employees, retirees, those without family abroad — inhabit a space between scarcity and desperate inventiveness. Their lives are a constant calculation, a daily hustle that’s no longer ingenuity but sheer struggle for survival. They see the products in the dollar stores through the glass, like someone gazing at an unreachable luxury display — though it’s only the essentials for living.
Without a doubt, a new social stratification has emerged, even if some deny it for political convenience or out of nostalgia for the revolutionary past. The division exists — it’s clear and tangible. And it’s no longer ideological, but explicitly monetary. Merit, education, or political loyalty have been replaced by the simple possession of foreign currency. A new privileged class has arisen — not for its revolutionary lineage, but for its access to dollars.
The consequences are immediate: the loss of professionals and the devaluation of knowledge. Cubans’ reflections revolve around dilemmas like this: Why stay in a classroom earning 5,000 CUP (12 USD) a month if I can drive a taxi for tourists and make that much or more in a day? The labor force is shifting massively toward any activity that generates hard currency, abandoning essential professions. Knowledge has become a low-value commodity in the domestic market.
Solidarity — once a pillar of revolutionary discourse — is crumbling under the pressure of need. The family has become the only safety net. Those without someone abroad to send remittances sink. Everyone for themselves has become the country’s unspoken code of ethics.
An entire generation of young Cubans knows only precariousness. Their future isn’t a life plan but a daily riddle to solve. Leaving the country — whether via legal or through dangerous routes — appears to be the only viable escape.
Cuba lives a heartbreaking paradox. On one hand, the State maintains a discourse of sovereignty and resistance against the “empire.” On the other, it has allowed the empire’s own currency to become the backbone of its domestic economy, creating an even deeper dependence.
This unplanned dollarization is a symptom of a broken model — a tacit admission that the national economy, as designed, has collapsed. But this “solution” is generating social wounds that may be as deep as the economic crisis itself. A country of first- and second-class citizens is emerging, where access to food and medicine depends on family geography and luck.
Read more from the diary of Safie M. Gonzalez here on Havana Times.