While the official narrative tries to avoid the word ‘poverty,’ the inequality that the revolutionaries promised to eradicate is increasingly evident. ne day, in early-August, just before 5 p.m., Marta Pérez was seen begging for money. She was doing so under the relentless sun that was beating down on San Rafael Boulevard. With her finely-wrinkled skin, striped dress, short hair and very long nails, she was like an apparition on the streets of Havana.
The 70-year-old was pushing her one-year-old granddaughter in a stroller. The little girl with curious eyes — named Cristi, or Crista (Marta can’t quite remember) — accompanies her grandmother on the unpleasant chore of trying to collect one, two, maybe five Cuban pesos. No matter how unpleasant it is, they have to find a way to eat. “Even if it’s just a little bit of rice and black beans,” Marta sighs. “Because I don’t have any money to buy meat.”
Marta lives with her daughter — a pregnant teaching assistant — her three grandchildren and her 79-year-old husband, who receives a pension. However, “it’s barely enough to buy groceries.” Marta — who, for years, sold croquettes, ice cream and soft drinks at El Viso restaurant in the urban neighborhood of El Vedado — was also entitled to her pension, but her employment record was lost, thus rendering her lifelong job worthless.
Once in a while, neighbors call her: “Come and wash my clothes, I’ll pay you.” Sometimes, she cleans houses. But what she earns isn’t enough — as is the case for almost everyone in Cuba today. Marta Pérez (70 años) vive en el bulevar de San Rafael, Cuba. Vive con su hija, una auxiliar pedagógica embarazada, sus tres nietos y su esposo, de 79 años, que recibe una pensión, pero “malamente le alcanza para comprar los mandados de la bodega”. Marta Pérez and her granddaughter on San Rafael Boulevard, in Havana, Cuba.Marcel Villa
Marta would need approximately 41,735 Cuban pesos (almost $100 on the informal market) to guarantee a month of decent food. This is the equivalent of 20 monthly minimum wages — or two years of pensions — to sit at the table with a plate of rice, beans, meat and some type of root vegetable or salad.
These were the calculations obtained by the Food Monitor Program (FMP), which is focused on tracking and reporting food insecurity in Cuba. To come up with these figures, the organization monitored food prices in stores, micro, small and medium-sized businesses, fairs and black market sales for a period of six months.
Today, it’s difficult to survive in Cuba: a country where blackouts stretch up to 18 hours, whole days pass without water, inflation is at 10%, food keeps getting pricier, and the U.S. dollar — which has hit a record of more than 400 pesos on the informal market — is eating away at the local currency.
Some organizations have dedicated themselves to quantifying Cuba’s misfortune. UNICEF asserts that a tenth of children on the island live in conditions of “severe food poverty. The Cuban Ministry of Public Health states that more and more Cubans eat only once a day. And the latest study by the Cuban Observatory of Human Rights (OCDH) reveals that seven in 10 Cubans have skipped breakfast, lunch, or dinner due to lack of money or food shortages, while nearly 89% of the population currently lives in extreme poverty.
However, the official narrative tries to avoid the word “poverty,” just as it has avoided acknowledging the ever-increasing inequality in the country — a problem the Cuban Revolution promised to eradicate or minimize when it put forward its national vision in 1959. Sociologist Elaine Acosta González — an associate researcher at the Cuban Research Institute at Florida International University (FIU) — asserts that, in Cuba, there’s a growing gap between rhetoric and reality, as well as between promises and achievements.
“These phenomena contradict the rhetoric of the Revolution, which specifically promised a better future — with equality and well-being — for its entire population,” she notes. “What we see 60 years later is an increase in poverty and inequality and, what’s worse, a denial by the government of the structural causes that are producing it.” Nearly 89% of the Cuban population currently lives in extreme poverty.
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