Eggs imported from Brazil are priced in dollars in San José de las Lajas and sold in minutes.
14ymedio, Julio César Contreras, San José de Las Lajas (Mayabeque)/ The white lights of the La Época market in San José de las Lajas, Mayabeque, illuminate the rows of eggs stacked on the counter. Arriving customers observe and consider their options. Someone asks the price, another complains, and a third decides to buy five cartons, each containing 30 eggs. “I don’t know where people get the dollars, but they buy them in bulk,” confesses an employee at one of the two state-run stores in the municipality that sell their 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 they receive their change in candy. “Since I don’t have a Classic 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 José, eating an egg is a luxury, not only because of the price, but because they’re nowhere to be found.” Her purchase, which she’ll share with a friend, she tells 14ymedio, will allow her to have lunch for a few days. “The cost is equivalent to more than a third of my pension. You can’t buy five or six eggs; you have to buy the whole carton.”
“The cost is equivalent to more than a third of my pension. You can’t buy five or six units, you have to take the whole carton.”
The images inside the market, operated 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 clearly state their origin: Brazil. The promised “food sovereignty” has yet to materialize, and the data reveals that Cuba has had to import increasing amounts of this product, primarily from the Dominican Republic and Brazil.
Last August, the state-run newspaper Trabajadores described the current situation as the worst in 60 years, noting that in just three decades Cuba’s egg production plummeted from 2.717 billion in 1991 to only 385 million in 2024. Traditionally egg-producing provinces, such as Mayabeque, have seen their output plummet by more than 60%. Poultry farms, plagued by feed shortages and frequent power outages, are barely managing to meet domestic consumption.
“Even money can’t solve the problem sometimes, because the shortages are total,” says Vladimir, a resident who pays in dollars thanks to the help of his sister who emigrated. “The refrigerators are empty for most of the month, and the stores that only accept MLC (freely convertible currency) are even worse,” the lajero admits.
In the Cuban diet, eggs have become the emergency animal protein: they replace pork, chicken, and fish.
In the Cuban diet, eggs have become the emergency animal protein: they replace pork, chicken, and fish, all of which are increasingly expensive, in a country where this October a pound of pork steak reached 1,000 pesos. But eggs aren’t cheap either: today a carton of 30 costs almost half the average monthly salary—about 6,500 pesos—a proportion that illustrates the crisis without needing additional figures. “Cartons of eggs are being sold on the street for up to 3,000 pesos, but that is when you can find them,” says Vladimir.
In the aisles of the La Época market, a mixture of resignation and routine hangs in the air. No one argues, no one smiles. Each customer carries their carton as if it were something fragile and precious, a relic that will soon vanish. Outside, the heat beats down on the sidewalk, but inside, the air conditioning continues to hum above the well-lit shelves. For a few minutes, before the eyes of those arriving and seeing the stacks of the sought-after product, the scarcity seems to have been suspended. Then someone asks if there will be eggs next week, and the employee replies without looking up: “No one knows that.”
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