In central Havana, the government ration book that once shaped monthly shopping routines is increasingly turning into a thin promise, with state-run shelves running short and prices pushing shoppers to improvise. Customers and store workers described a late-April situation in which only a handful of items were available, leaving them to skip meals, trade down their diets, or rely on help from relatives abroad as Cuba’s broader economic stress persists.
José Luis Amate López, a store worker, said his shop had barely anything to sell as late April arrived and that he hadn’t had a customer in almost two weeks, aside from a stray kitten that wandered into the bodega. He said the shelves that once held goods for the 5,000 customers who depend on the store for subsidized food were nearly empty by late April. He also said ration books that previously provided for a healthy diet and kept families fully fed for a month are now shrinking. “No Cuban can truly survive on the products from the ration book anymore,” Amate López said.
The ration book was established by Fidel Castro in the early 1960s and became known as “la libreta.” It offered heavily subsidized goods ranging from milk to fish and even cigarettes, with customers expecting their assigned bodegas to be stocked by the first of each month. During Cuba’s “Special Period” in the 1990s, when Soviet aid plummeted, deprivation hit and ration availability worsened; the story says a medical journal study found Cubans lost an average of 5% to 25% of their body weight during that time, with items such as bread, milk, eggs and chicken in scarce quantities. Even so, multiple people interviewed said the current situation is worse than what they lived through then.
Amate López described how his assigned bodega has changed over decades. He said it was once so full that “you could barely walk,” but is now an empty room with dusty posters listing prices and quantities for nearly two dozen goods that he said are no longer available. He said two industrial freezers that used to contain meat and chicken now only keep his water bottle cold, and that in April the only items he had available to sell were rice, sugar and split chickpeas. He also said recent ration allotments for turning 15 and for those turning 65 did not materialize as expected at his store.
Ana Enamorado, 68, said she was only able to buy split chickpeas and 2 pounds of sugar at her assigned bodega in April. With a salary and pension totaling about 8,000 Cuban pesos ($16) a month, she said she struggles to buy the remaining basic goods at small private stores known as “mipymes.” She described the cost of items in those shops, saying a carton of 30 eggs costs roughly 3,000 pesos ($6), 2 pounds of meat hash are nearly 900 pesos ($2), and 1 pound of cornmeal is roughly 200 pesos ($50 cents). “There’s hardly anything in the ration book,” she said. “We’re practically living off air.”
Enamorado said her lunches and dinners have become a rotation built around rice, seasoned ground meat and cornmeal, or sometimes nothing at all. She recalled earlier years when her diet included pork, lamb, fricassee, fried plantain slices and red beans and rice. “Now we have to cut back, have one meal a day and live on memories,” she said.
Beyond the state stores, the AP story said Cuba imports up to 80% of the food it consumes, including items offered at government stores that are increasingly unavailable due to a lack of government resources. William LeoGrande, a professor at American University who has tracked Cuba for years, said the government “bungled” the 2021 merging of two Cuban currencies and that inflation has persisted because the state spends far more money than it takes in. He said the government has to stop printing money and balance its budget without drastically cutting social services, because much of the state budget is spent on health, education, social welfare and food imports.
LeoGrande said Cuba’s government has talked about shifting from subsidizing goods to subsidizing people in need, which he said could free up money to import fuel, medicine and other items. But he said many Cubans still depend on ration books while the island’s crises deepen, alongside severe power outages, petroleum shortages and what he described as a U.S. energy blockade. Cuban comedians have also turned the ration book into material for jokes, including a character named “Pánfilo” who sings in a recent video posted online: “Place the notebook in a cemetery, because it’s ready to be buried.”
For some households, remittances have become a crucial supplement to rationing. On a recent afternoon, Lázaro Cuesta, 56, stood in line for a daily allowance of two small bread rolls for himself and his wife. He said the portions and price have changed, telling the story: “Before it was 80 grams and cost 5 (Cuban) cents. Now it’s 40 grams and costs 75 cents,” adding that the quality is worse. Cuesta said he earns 6,000 Cuban pesos ($12) a month, his wife receives a monthly pension of 4,800 pesos ($10), and they also receive $200 a month from her brother and daughter abroad. “If not for the remittances,” he said as he grabbed his neck with his right hand, “hang yourself.”
Rosa Rodríguez, 54, said she does not receive remittances and described how scarcity affects each purchase choice. The story says roughly 60% of Cubans on the island receive remittances, but Rodríguez said she obtained only donated 4 pounds (1.8 kilograms) of rice at her assigned bodega in April. She said she earns 4,000 pesos ($8) a month, which she said is not a bad salary for Cuba but is not enough. “Everything is scarce here — everything — even that wretched bread they give us,” Rodríguez said. She said she spends much of her salary on eggs and faces a tradeoff between categories of food: “If you buy beans, then you can’t buy sugar,” she said. “If I retire, I die.”