The Christmas Dinner Pig in Cuba Will Be Imported
or won’t be at all
While the rest of the world strives to shorten the distance between farm and table, the Island is moving in the opposite direction—importing more and more of what it eats each day.
By Natalia Lopez Moya (14ymedio)
HAVANA TIMES – This year, if there’s roast pork on Cubans’ Christmas Eve tables, it will most likely have traveled hundreds or even thousands of kilometers before reaching the stove. At Havana’s Tulipán Street market on Tuesday, the signs told the story: “Pork loin (imported), 1,200 pesos per pound.” The sign announces the undisputed reign of foreign pork on the nation’s market stalls. (Note: Most Cubans have monthly salaries or pensions under 6,000 Pesos)
Amid the noise of buyers and the heat trapped under metal roofs, the word “imported” echoes through the large market hall that was once managed by the Youth Labor Army and is now full of private vendors. Imported rice: 275 pesos a pound. Imported black beans: 400. Imported sugar at 650 pesos per kilo. Even the lemons, at 300 pesos each, have arrived from abroad.
The market’s chalkboards, which only a few years ago displayed homegrown products, now resemble a customs catalog. A customer laughs with resignation: “The only thing local here is the dust on the floor.”
14ymedio’s cameras captured the scene: a group of US visitors, wearing caps and jeans, looked over stalls packed with goods labeled “Made in USA.” Some of the newcomers—participants in the US–Cuba Agricultural Conference, surrounded by heavy security—didn’t bother to hide their satisfaction. In a market that still bears a name linked to the Revolutionary Armed Forces, US products—meat, rice, beans—are increasingly abundant.
Still, the imported pork loin, cleaner and better packaged, divides opinions. “It’s lean meat, well cut, and hardly has any bones,” says one shopper. “But it doesn’t taste the same,” replies a woman. “It’s missing the flavor of the pigs raised by our own farmers.” One way or another, few dispute its ubiquity: the foreign pig has come to supplant the local cracklings of what was once called “the national mammal.”
In 2018, Cuba produced around 149,000 tons of pork. In 2023, the figure barely surpassed 13,000, and last year it didn’t even reach 10,000, according to official data. Many state farms closed, and animal feed became scarce. Most private pig farmers—who once supplied neighborhoods and end-of-year celebrations—gave up as well.
The shortage opened the door to foreign suppliers. Over the last five years, the United States, Spain, and Brazil have become the main exporters of a meat that for decades symbolized Cuba’s self-sufficiency. According to monthly reports from the US–Cuba Trade and Economic Council, US pork exports to Cuba in 2024 averaged between two and four million dollars a month, for a yearly total exceeding $25 million.
Spain, one of the world’s leaders in pork production, has increased shipments to the Cuban market since 2022, and Brazil—a regional agrifood powerhouse—has sent thousands of tons of frozen cuts to the Island.
The result is visible: at the Tulipán Street market, pork loins bearing Brazilian export seals are everywhere. Labels in Portuguese mingle with sacks of Spanish rice and US beans. “The cleaner and prettier it looks, the more expensive it is,” summarizes a shopper reading a package of Brazilian sugar. The smell of reheated grease wafting from food stalls and the reggaetón blaring from speakers complete the scene.
Imported Abundance for the Few
In a WhatsApp group, a private store in Havana’s Miramar neighborhood offers a wide variety of imported foods—grapes, peppers, red onions, even carrots—aimed mainly at diplomats and wealthy Cubans. The store’s ad emphasizes that everything is “clean, pretty, and tasty,” adding “fresh and newly arrived.”
Pork is more than just protein in Cuba—it’s symbolic. No New Year’s celebration is complete without it: the pig roasting on a spit, the crackling skin, the aroma of garlic marinade. But this time, the flavor of the feast will come vacuum-sealed and frozen, shipped from cold storage facilities in Iowa, Toledo, or São Paulo.
While much of the world is trying to shorten the path between field and table, Cuba travels the opposite route. Across Europe and Latin America, local farmers’ markets, cooperatives, and “zero-kilometer” labels are multiplying—but on the Island, food travels thousands of miles before reaching store shelves.
What was once a relatively short chain of production and consumption—the farmer selling to the cart vendor, and the vendor to the neighborhood—has been replaced by a system where food supply is measured in containers and hard currency. Thus, while in Madrid or Buenos Aires a local tomato is a source of pride, in Havana the novelty is a sack of rice with English lettering or a pork loin packaged in Portuguese.
The scene grows ever more surreal. Beans are no longer just beans—they’re “porotos” or “alubias.” Peas come in bags marked green peas, and sugar carries the stamp of a Guatemalan mill. Even the fruit, once brought from southern Mayabeque or Jagüey Grande, now comes from Florida or Yucatán. It’s a portrait of Cuba’s paradox: in a country with an agricultural vocation, it’s increasingly hard to eat anything that grows from its own soil.
A vendor wearing a stained apron watches as some customers frown at the prices and comments, “People don’t ask where it comes from; they just ask if it’s good quality and complain that it’s expensive.” In those everyday gestures, an era’s transformation is condensed: Cuba now imports what it once raised itself. Not long ago, many dreamed of a home-raised pig; this December, they’ll have to settle for its globalized cousin.
Inflation has done the rest. With the dollar trading at 450 pesos on the informal market, a 30-egg carton costs nearly half a month’s salary, and pork loin at 1,200 pesos per pound has become a luxury few can afford. “Local pork used to be for the poor, but now even the poor can’t buy it,” says an elderly man comparing prices. “Everything we eat comes from abroad now.”
Under the midday sun, the market keeps filling up. The chalkboards blur with new numbers, the scent of imported garlic mingles with that of Peruvian mandarins, and the freezers hum on the brink of a blackout. The pig—once the beloved protagonist of Cuban celebrations—now carries a foreign passport.
First published in Spanish by 14ymedio and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.