Cuba's Shortages Leave Households to Manage Crisis

Cuban households face hours without electricity, scarce fuel, more expensive food, nonexistent transportation and services that have stopped working. People search for ways to keep food from spoiling. The crisis reaches into basic routines: cooking, storing meat, getting water and finding medicine.

Daily Costs, Paid at Home

Francisco Acevedo describes Cuba as facing a profound economic crisis marked by inflation, blackouts, shortages and declining purchasing power. Citizens judge government performance by whether wages cover daily needs, transportation runs and medicine is available, he writes. When electricity and services fail, households pay the cost and must find a way to manage.

In neighborhoods, people are passing around advice that meat wrapped in plastic and buried will stay fresh. Safie M. Gonzalez says no report confirms the method, and no authority endorses it. Plastic can trap moisture in a warm, sealed space where bacteria thrive. Meat from a market without a proper cold chain carries added risk. The rumor offers a desperate answer to unreliable electricity and intermittent salt supplies, but it isn't a safe way to preserve food.

Salt shortages have also weakened traditional meat preservation. In late 2024, the state-owned Salt Company acknowledged a shortfall of thousands of tons owed to the Ministry of Domestic Trade. The gap had lasted more than two years, causing continued shortages and interruptions in ration-book salt sales. Distribution resumed in May 2025, but in some areas salt arrived in bulk, without packaging, and often damp.

The country's only saltworks able to produce dry salt through an adequate technological process is in Guantanamo; it supplies Havana and its own province. The rest of the country receives damp salt, processed with equipment not originally designed for that purpose. Without dry salt, people can't make tasajo. Without electricity, refrigerators can't be relied on. People may buy food for the day, cook it immediately or gamble on the neighborhood rumor.

Official Labels and Public Measures

Acevedo writes that Miguel Díaz-Canel has again put grievances at the center of his international discourse, questioning the treatment he received or how a United Nations meeting unfolded. Cuban diplomacy typically presents such episodes as evidence of isolation imposed by the United States and hostility from certain governments. At home, citizens may instead judge performance by power, transportation, wages, medicine and basic services.

Díaz-Canel called author Orlando Gutierrez Boronat a “terrorist.” Acevedo says such an accusation should come with publicly available evidence, verifiable information and legal safeguards. He describes labels such as “mercenary,” “enemy” and “counterrevolutionary” as tools for stripping opponents of legitimacy and casting criticism as a threat. In the political culture he describes, officials can frame protest as a foreign operation and disagreement as betrayal.

Acevedo also describes an image of Cuba's Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Ernesto Soberon, appearing on camera with visibly shaking hands. He notes that the trembling could have personal or medical causes and doesn't allow a diagnosis. The image can also be read publicly as reflecting national strain.

A Visitor's Complaint, A Broken Promise

A tourist complained that the Melia Trinidad hotel provided no water for a shower. The hotel shut off water at nine in the morning and restored it at six in the evening. Hotel management might see an operational issue, Acevedo writes, while a customer could see a breach of the commercial agreement.

Cuba seeks visitors and foreign currency, but hotels face maintenance problems, deteriorating facilities, supply shortages, energy difficulties and inadequate staff training. Caribbean competitors offer, in many cases, better connections, more reliable infrastructure and a clearer relationship between price and experience. Tourism depends on transportation, electricity, supplies, connectivity, security, cleanliness and a response to problems. Individual complaints can spread globally through social media.

Gonzalez describes safer preservation options when supplies allow: salting and drying meat in the sun, frying meat and covering it with fat, or preserving it in vinegar and garlic. None is ideal or restores freshness. Salmonella and E. coli can multiply rapidly when meat temperature is uncontrolled, and washing the surface isn't enough to eliminate them. Food poisoning can bring diarrhea, vomiting, cramps, fever and chills, while obtaining medication and hospital care in Cuba is becoming increasingly difficult. People living through the shortages remain responsible for keeping food safe.