In Cienfuegos, Cuba, parents are concerned about the poor quality of food in schools
14ymedio, Julio César Contreras, Cienfuegos, 9 March 2025 — A discolored broth and a lumpy minced meat are all that is on the metal tray that the students carry to the table. In the cafeteria of the Guerrillero Heroico primary school, in the city of Cienfuegos, lunches provoke aversion among students and concern among parents. The poor quality of the food and the scanty portions are added to the poor practices in its transport and conservation.
Around noon, relatives gather in front of the main door of the school to pick up children from preschool to sixth grade. Most will eat lunch at home and only a few will stay to eat the menu for which they pay seven pesos a month, a subsidized price designed especially for working mothers with two or more children.
However, the semi-boarding feature has ceased to be the guaranteed food ration that eased the domestic life of families with school-aged children, and has become a new burden. “I always have to get him something to add to his lunch, whether it’s a hot dog, a banana, a piece of sausage or a boiled egg,” Yudeisy, mother of a first-grader at the Ignacio Agramonte elementary school, tells 14ymedio.
“Adding something for lunch takes a long time, but now it is less and less worth doing because you practically have to send everything,” the woman says. Her main concern focuses on poor hygiene and the way in which the lunch is transported from the Food Processing Center, located in the Pueblo Griffo neighborhood, to the school cafeteria. “Sometimes it has a chopped-up texture and smells bad.”
When the food arrives at the school they must wait until the lunch break begins
“My son began to complain that the food was terrible, and then I found out that it is transported one or two hours before from where they prepare it, in horse carts and under the sun.” When it arrives at the school, they must wait until lunchtime begins. High temperatures accelerate its deterioration.
Although it is very difficult for Yudeisy to pick up her son from school and take him home to eat something, she says that even though it’s difficult, she prefers to do it rather than risk the child’s health. “Anyway, he no longer wants to eat what they serve him on the tray because he says it doesn’t taste good, that it’s cold and that many times he doesn’t even know what it is.”
Long blackouts further complicate the situation, as the pumping of water to both the manufacturing center and the school is frequently interrupted. “In addition to drinking water, he has to bring some water to wash his hands before lunch.” Yudeisy’s son’s backpack looks more like “a suitcase for a move” than something a schoolboy would carry. He must take a spoon, a glass, a water bottle and some food to add to the lunch.
Although fresh fruits, greens and vegetables have had a very low presence on Cuban school trays for decades, in recent years nutritional deficiencies have worsened. The authorities of the sector cannot guarantee a protein, rice disappears frequently, and the legumes are replaced by watery broths of dubious nutritional value.
The solution most used by parents in these cases is to take the student home and do without school lunch, but not all families can do it. “When I was a child, parents felt confident that their child was fed, not with a lot but with real food: fish, rice, peas, bread and even some dessert,” recalls a 47-year-old man with a daughter in José Gregorio Martínez primary school.
“When I was in elementary school, back in the 80s, we complained that we were often given ’the three musketeers’ – rice, peas and an egg.” Currently, the father recognizes that a menu with that composition would be “a dream, something that cannot be guaranteed every day, even in many families that have two or three salaries coming in.” From that time of the Soviet subsidy, he also remembers the dining rooms that “smelled of mackerel, and that people left without even eating the custard” for dessert.
“Now it is convenient for the teachers that we parents come to pick up the children at noon, because there are fewer and fewer classes in the afternoon,” the man explains to this newspaper. “They know that a student who goes home is a student who does not return, and so they don’t have to work in the afternoon. They can use the time to solve personal problems, stand in line or simply wait until leaving time.”
“Since the classroom has no teaching assistant, the teacher finishes her classes before 11:30 am, gives two or three homework assignments and dismisses the kids. She doesn’t even have lunch at school, because she is diabetic and has to comply with a strict diet that looks nothing like the one they serve in the dining room,” he explains.
“Last year I peeked into the dining room because my son had forgotten his water bottle. He had no rice on his tray, not even a meal, only a broth of a murky color with a noodle floating in the middle. That same day I decided that the child was not going to continue having lunch at school,” he adds. “Although it is a sacrifice for us to prepare something at home, at least we still can. There are families that can’t even do that.”
However, with the poverty that has spread to the whole society and also reaches the educational staff, the food that the children reject is not thrown away. “My son’s teacher was happy when I told her that he wasn’t going to have lunch at school for a while,” says Yudeisy. “She carries a plastic container every day that she fills with some of the food that the children refuse. For her, having that tasteless soup, a few pieces of pumpkin and the odd little bit of rice to take home is one of the motivations to get up every day and go to the classroom.”
Translated by Regina Anavy
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