Many retirees would need to invest half of their pension in a simple 284-gram package of the imported product.
14ymedio, Julio César Contreras, Matanzas, July 8, 2025 — Only the color remains in the cup of coffee that Rafael, every morning, brings to his lips, leaning on the counter of the Reparto Armando Mestre snack bar in the city of Matanzas. Unable to face the day without first taking a sip that wakes him up, this 67-year-old Cuban has come to accept that his pocket can only afford a scarce, bitter, adulterated and almost cold concoction.
“About seven o’clock in the morning I leave my house here, after loading water,” he tells this newspaper. Rafael has a routine that reminds you of those wheels hamsters spin around all day. ” From early morning I start to watch for the water truck to see if I can fill at least one bucket that will serve me for the kitchen or washing a cup.” If I’m lucky, I’ll also be able to store water in a bottle and save a little for a bath later.”
Then it’s time to go to the El Matador snack bar, managed privately, where, for 20 pesos, Rafael can have a cup of coffee that he does not enjoy, because it’s not very good. “It has a strange taste because it is very mixed, but at least it is something hot that wakes me up a bit,” he tells 14ymedio. In his home, hard hit by blackouts that often exceed 20 hours a day and without propane, it is very difficult for him to use his coffee maker.
“When I’m lucky and the light comes on, I can set up the electric coffee machine, but then there’s a blackout and I can’t keep that coffee warm, it gets cold like a dead man’s leg.” The quality of the roast is another headache for those who seek to delight in a good variety of Arabica with a pronounced aroma, mild taste and low acidity, like the one that used to come from the national crops.
“Most of the coffee that is being sold right now in Matanzas comes from Miami,” says an employee of a private cafeteria who dispatches, every morning, up to 50 small cups. Thousands of packages of coffee enter the island every day in the luggage of travelers, an import that has completely displaced the national coffee, which is scarce due to the drop in production.
The collapse of Cuban coffee is a palpable reality. Consumers notice it in the disappearance of the product in the bodegas, in the increase of the price of the bean on the informal market and even in the quality of what they manage to buy. According to the National Bureau of Statistics and Information, production in the sector has fallen by 51% over the last five years.
“From Miami comes La Llave and Bustelo coffee, which they like very much because they have the traditional Cuban roast, and when people drink it they remember what the coffee here used to be like,” says the seller. “But also in recent years, other cheaper brands come in, and although they are of lower quality, for any Cuban they are glorious compared to the bodega coffee”.
El Morro, El Dorado, La Carreta and Cubanazo are some of the names that have also slipped from Florida into Cuban coffee shops. In the large community of Cuban exiles, the products from shops and supermarkets fill the niches that the deep economic crisis has opened up for them in Cuba. From school uniforms for all levels of education to generators for the blackouts: goods designed and intended for the consumer within Cuba have grown in recent years.
“My cousin who lives in Hialeah says that she only buys those packages of coffee to send here because they aren’t what she likes to drink every day,” the cafeteria employee admits.” But here they do very well because people don’t have the rationed coffee, which hasn’t appeared in Matanzas since February.” Mixed or low quality, the imported coffee always exceeds by far the bitter and often unnamed coffee that is distributed through the ration book.
“Before I bought the coffee that they sold in the bodega, mixed it with peas and added a little of the good coffee,” explains Rafael, but even that possibility is a thing of the past because now the rationed coffee “neither arrives nor serves. The few peas I can buy are for eating,” he adds, in allusion to the grain that for decades served both the state and consumers to stretch the monthly coffee ration.
With a pension of 2,500 pesos per month, Rafael would need almost half his retirement – about 1,200 – to purchase a 284-gram package of La Llave. Paying this amount would be a mistake, so he carries in his head a mental map of where he can still drink coffee in a cafe that has prices of 10, 20 or even 40 pesos a cup.
“If I don’t have a sip in the morning, I get a headache, but if I drink it in a state cafeteria I’ll probably end up with a belly ache”
“I have had coffee in the kiosks at bus terminals, and it was like being struck by lightning,” he explains. “If I don’t have a sip in the morning, I get a headache, but if I drink it in a state cafeteria I’ll probably end up with a belly ache,” he says, summing up his dilemma. The state premises that still distribute the popular drink have been reduced, and the volume of his laundry has also been limited. “If you get to the water truck ten minutes after they start dispensing it, it’s already gone,” Rafael complains.
There is, however, the option of going to a better place with higher prices. “I can no longer afford the coffee at the Sala White, much less the Hotel Velazco, and I do not count on those in the Paseo de Narváez. I don’t have the 200 pesos to spend,” laments Nilda, another matancera who needs her daily dose of caffeine. “It looks like they made this one early, because it’s lukewarm. That’s what there is for the poor,” she asserts.
The employee keeps the sugar bowl under the counter and administers only one spoon per cup. She is not allowed to add more because the most emblematic product that comes out of the Cuban fields also suffers a drop in production. “A pound is 270 pesos,” explains the worker. At one side of the stove, where the coffee sits on a burner, is a package with the label “Florida Crystals,” containing sugar from those cane plantations that, in Florida and at the hands of Cuban-American entrepreneurs, also supply the island.
Translated by Regina Anavy
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