The customers, with the anxiety of those who cannot contain themselves before the image of their desires, raised their eyebrows and pursed their lips when the saleswoman answered their questions
14ymedio, Natalia López Moya, Havana, 9 January 2024 — In the movie Juan de los Muertos [Juan of the Dead], the zombies who wander the streets of Havana have a lost look and a clumsy step. That fiction, which masterfully mixed humor and terror, seems to have predicted the nervous walk and the irritated faces of the smokers who roam the Cuban capital these days. Desperate and with a gesture of anguish, they are looking for cigarettes that they can afford in the midst of a rise in price, which has exceeded 1,500 pesos per pack.
This Wednesday, on the boulevard of the central San Rafael Street in Central Havana, a petite woman unfolded her merchandise in a box. The customers, with the anxiety of those who cannot contain themselves before the image of their desires, raised their eyebrows and pursed their lips when the saleswoman answered their questions: “The boxes of H are 1,000 pesos. The Upmann [strong] and the mild ones are from 300 to 600.” If the smoker doesn’t have enough money for these, the merchant offers Criollos, the worst valued and popularly known as “rompepechos” [chest breakers] at 350 pesos a pack or each cigarette of H. Upmann for 50 pesos.
“The packs of H are 1,000 pesos. The Upmann [strong] and the mild ones are from 300 to 600”
“It’s better to smoke the bills than to pay so much” lamented a sad customer who went for a pack and left with barely three cigarettes in his hand. “I haven’t even been able to sleep for days. I no more end a fight with my wife only to get into another; I can’t go on anymore,” he stammered. In other places, managed by MSMEs, the prices are even higher. In those markets a pack of Populares with filters reaches 1,600 pesos, and a pack of H. Upmann is fast on its heels with 1,500. Employees justify the escalation with the cost of buying the goods from the State or, in the case of foreign brands, of importing them.
“Most of the time we have to buy Cuban cigarettes in the stores in MLC [hard currency] or now in the ones that have opened in dollars, so we barely get anything at the current price of dollars,” says an employee of a private market on Reina Street. The young worker says that in recent days she has even come to feel afraid, “because the smokers come in, see the prices, get very upset and take it out on everyone. They usually swear and even punch the wall.”
“Most of the time we have to buy Cuban cigarettes in the stores in MLC [hard currency] or now in those that have opened in dollars”
In a country that grows tobacco and in which 24% of Cubans, from the age of 15, actively smoke, the rise in the price of cigarettes puts hundreds of thousands of consumers in check. Although some cut consumption in order not to affect personal and family finances, most reduce expenses in other areas in order to be able to pay for their addiction. “I may lack food, water and a roof over my head, but I don’t want to gamble with cigarettes,” summarized a young man sitting in Fraternity Park smoking a newly-bought pack: “It cost me 1,500 pesos, the same amount as the monthly retirement my mother receives.”
According to this Havanan, lowering cigarette prices should even become a political priority for the authorities. “They know that when people can’t smoke they go crazy. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were a protest, with smokers throwing themselves into the street,” he predicts. It is not difficult to see his premonition in some scenes from that 2011 film where some zombies, with their slow gait and their terrifying gaze, take over the esplanade in front of the Plaza de la Revolución.
Translated by Regina Anavy
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