Many Cuban households are reducing portion sizes, cutting back on the number of traditional items on the menu or simply working with whatever happens to be available.
14ymedio, Natalia López Moya, Havana, 31 December 2024 — On December 31, the Cuban dinner table will reflect a year marked by higher food prices and shortages of basic products. New Year’s dishes will cost more to prepare than they did twelve months ago. While imported ingredients will play a larger role, the holiday meal will be little different at some homes from the meager rations of any other day.
Pork, rice, beans, yucca and tomato — the inseparable quintet of the Cuban New Year’s Eve meal — are among the ingredients in shortest supply. The situation is such that some households are opting to reduce portion sizes, cut back on the number of traditional items on the menu or simply work with whatever is available and affordable.
Among the items seeing the largest price increases in 2024 is pork, which sold for 1,000 pesos a pound in December. At some markets in Havana, such as the one on 19th and B streets in Havana’s Vedado district, it was going for 1,200 pesos, almost double what it cost at Christmas in 2023. A shortage of animal feed has hampered domestic production, resulting in a proliferation of American pork loins, which now dominate the market. Steak, pork rinds and fried pastries have become luxuries in a country where the average monthly income is 4,648 pesos (USD $193.62 at the official exchange rate) according to the National Office of Statistics and Information (ONEI).
The tomato is not far behind. The fruit — typically thinly sliced, seasoned and served with lettuce or cabbage — was 400 pesos at the Plaza Boulevard market in Sancti Spíritus in December 2024. The previous January it was going for only 100 pesos at the same market. By July it had completely disappeared due a supply shortage. The market, which is located in a region with a long agricultural tradition and whose prices 14ymedio tracks every week, has become a gauge for measuring a crisis that has burned through wallets and charred household finances.
In Cienfuegos province, another agricultural region, black beans closed out the year at 400 pesos a pound, a price in excess of $1.30 USD at the informal exchange rate. In other regions the price exceeded $1.50. The legume is one of the foods most severely impacted by the drop in domestic production. Faced with an avalanche of foreign labels, Cubans now find themselves having to learn the names of this product in other countries, buying packages whose labels read “porotos,” “alubias” or “habichuelas.”
However, it is rice that has undoubtedly been the biggest headache for Cuban cooks in 2024. Stores selling rationed goods are only now, in late December, getting around to selling November’s allotment of the popular grain. After seeing prices soar in the last five years, rice is now selling on the open market for close to 200 pesos a pound.
Imported 0ptions, sold mainly in one-kilogram packages, are of higher quality and are more carefully presented but cost more than 400 pesos. This basic ingredient, essential to almost every lunch or dinner, has driven the island’s food costs through the roof. At Holguín’s Los Chinos marketplace, the prized item was going for as much 240 pesos a pound in August. Though it had fallen to 190 pesos by year’s end, this is cold comfort to those households whose only source of income is a state pensions or a government salary.
The news is not good for yucca either. In December 2023 it cost 50 pesos a pound at Cienfuegos’ Plaza La Calzada market. A year later it is nearly 70 pesos at the same location. The dramatic fall in domestic production threatens to further reduce the number of cassava crops, a food inextricably linked to national identity. The steepest decline can be seen in the state sector as evidenced by this graph prepared by economist Pedro Monreal based on data from ONEI.
Those who decide to forego the usual New Year’s Eve dinner in favor of a popular lifesaver in times of scarcity will not have an easy task either. Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz recently recalled Raúl Castro once saying that it would be a shame if we ever had to import sugar. “Well, we are now experiencing that shame because we are now importing sugar,” he admitted. Even without data on the sugar sector for the past year, the average Cuban knows what is going on. There is no sugar and prices are skyrocketing, hovering around 400 to 600 pesos per pound in recent weeks.
The situation is summed up in the November consumer price index. ONEI reports that raw sugar rose by 16.12% while the refined version rose by 10.98%. “Milordo” or “munga” — a recipe in which a couple of spoonfuls of sugar are mixed in a glass of water — has also become unattainable for many Cubans this New Year’s Eve.
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