The Struggle for Eggs in Cuba is Solved with US Dollars
Imported eggs from Brazil are now dollarized in San Jose de las Lajas and sell out within minutes.
By Julio Cesar Contreras (14ymedio)
HAVANA TIMES – The white lights of the La Época market in San José de las Lajas, Mayabeque, make the rows of eggs stacked on the counter shine. Customers arrive, observe, calculate. Someone asks the price, another grumbles, and a third decides to take five cartons, each with 30 eggs. “I don’t know where people get the dollars from, but they buy them in bulk,” confides an employee of one of the two state-run stores in the municipality that sell products in US currency.
The price — $5.25 per carton — is equivalent to about 2,572 pesos, according to the informal exchange rate reported daily by El Toque. If paying in cash, customers must hand over six dollars and receive their change in candy. “Since I don’t have a Clasica card, I have no other choice,” protests Tamara, a retiree who has brought a small plastic container to protect the eggs.
“These days in San Jose, eating an egg is a luxury — not only because of the price but because you can’t find them anywhere.” Her purchase, which she’ll share with a friend, will allow her to have lunch for a few days, she tells 14ymedio. “The cost is more than a third of my monthly pension. You can’t buy five or six eggs; you have to take the whole carton.”
The images inside the market, managed by the state-run Tiendas Caribe chain, speak for themselves: shelves full of wine, mayonnaise, imported cookies, and eggs with commercial labels in English and Portuguese. The boxes indicate their origin: Brazil. The promised “food sovereignty” has yet to arrive, and the data show that Cuba has had to import more and more eggs, mainly from the Dominican Republic and Brazil.
Last August, the official newspaper Trabajadores described the current situation as the worst in 60 years, noting that in just three decades Cuba’s egg production fell from 2.717 billion in 1991 to only 385 million in 2024. Traditionally productive provinces like Mayabeque have lost more than 60% of their output. Poultry farms, crippled by a lack of feed and constant power outages, can barely sustain a small part of domestic consumption.
“Sometimes not even money can solve it, because there’s a total shortage,” says Vladimir, a local resident who pays in dollars thanks to help from his emigrant sister. “The refrigerators stay empty most of the month, and the stores that sell in MLC (a devalued magnetic currency) are even worse,” he admits.
In Cubans’ diet, the egg has become the emergency animal protein — a substitute for pork, chicken, and fish — all of which have skyrocketed in price. This October, a pound of pork steak reached 1,000 pesos. But eggs aren’t cheap either: a 30-egg carton now costs nearly half of the average monthly salary — around 6,500 pesos — a ratio that illustrates the crisis without need for further numbers. “Egg cartons are being sold on the street for up to 3,000 pesos, but that’s only if you can find them,” Vladimir adds.
In the aisles of the La Epoca market, a mix of resignation and routine hangs in the air. No one argues, no one smiles. Each customer carries their carton as if holding something fragile and precious — a relic that will soon vanish. Outside, the heat beats down on the pavement, but inside, the air conditioner hums above the brightly lit shelves. For a few minutes, in view of those arriving and seeing the coveted stacks of eggs, scarcity seems to have been suspended. Then someone asks if there will be eggs next week, and the employee replies without looking up: “Nobody knows that.”
First published in Spanish by 14ymedio and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.