Shortages, inflation frustrate Cubans struggling to get by

Julia Sardiñas awoke early so she could reach a grocery store in Cuba's capital by 6 a.m.

After seven hours in line, she achieved her goal: the purchase of two plastic 1 litre bottles of cooking oil for which she paid 48 Cuban pesos — $2 — each.

“I was standing for many hours; you have to wait your turn to be able enter for two bottles, but it's something,” said the retired 65-year-old.

Grocery shopping has become an increasingly costly and arduous struggle for many people in a country where the pandemic, inefficient production, government controls and U.S. economic sanctions have aggravated an economic crisis.

A drastic drop in crucial tourism income caused by COVID-19 helped spur the government last year to adopt reforms it had long considered. Those included the elimination of an inefficient dual currency system that had made the local peso — in which most Cubans were paid — a sort of second-class currency. It had been a poor cousin to the “convertible peso” used by tourists, people who worked with them and those who received money from relatives abroad.

Adoption of a single currency for all, along with shortages, led within a few months to sharply increased prices for many goods that weren't matched, for most at least, by the simultaneous rise in salaries.

And because the government has had trouble producing or importing all the goods needed, it also led to emergence of a black market, with people paying a premium for dollars or for scarce items.

That has led to limits on individual purchases. The state store where Sardiñas bought her oil scanned her identity card to ensure she wasn't buying more than two at a time.

The problems have fed a sense of inequity among many that is especially bitter in a socialist system that prides itself in a relatively equal distribution of goods.

“It's impossible to maintain my family on my salary,” complained Marcia Ochoa, a state worker who said she makes 2,400 pesos — $100 at the official rate — each month and lives with her husband and elderly parents.

She said she depended on money sent by her son in the United States to help buy things like soap, shampoo and food.

Life became more complicated when the administration of former U.S. President Donald Trump tightened economic sanctions on Cuba in November 2020 and blocked remittances via Western Union.

Her son used to send her roughly $100 a month via Western Union. “I could go to a store to shop and resolve many problems.”

With those exchange houses closed, she relies on visitors who bring in money from her son and recently got about 70 pesos per dollar on the informal market — nearly three times the official rate. That black market rate over the past week rose further, to about 100 to 1.

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