The shelves once laden with goods during his childhood sat nearly empty in late April, with barely anything to offer the 5,000 clients who depend on the state-run store for subsidized food.
“No Cuban can truly survive on the products from the ration book anymore,” Amate López said.
The ration book shrank during the “Special Period,” when Soviet aid plummeted in the 1990s and deprivation hit Cuba. During that time, Cubans lost an average of 5% to 25% of their body weight, according to one study published in a medical journal, with goods including bread, milk, eggs and chicken in scarce quantities.
Even so, many Cubans who lived through that period say the current situation is worse.
Amate López recalled that his assigned bodega was so full decades ago “you could barely walk.”
It’s now an empty room with dusty old posters detailing the prices and amounts of nearly two dozen goods no longer available, including yogurt, pasta and bars of soap. Two industrial freezers once packed with meat and chicken serve only to keep Amate López’s water bottle cold. In April, the only items he had available to sell were rice, sugar and split chickpeas.
Cuban teens turning 15, a landmark birthday in Latin America, used to receive cake and several cases of beer. Now they only get 3 kilograms (6.6 pounds) of ground beef. The government recently opted to celebrate those turning 65 by awarding them sardines, a bar of soap and a package of toilet paper. But Amate López said he doesn’t have those items.
Havana resident Ana Enamorado, 68, said she only was able to buy split chickpeas and 2 pounds (1 kilogram) of sugar at her assigned bodega in April.
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.”
Her lunches and dinners are a rotation of rice, seasoned ground meat and cornmeal, or sometimes nothing at all. She recalled once upon a time being able to eat 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,” Enamorado said.
Cuba imports up to 80% of the food it consumes, including goods offered at state stores that are increasingly unavailable given a lack of government resources.
“They just don’t have the money to do it anymore,” William LeoGrande, a professor at American University who has tracked Cuba for years, said about the government running out of funds. “Things come in an ad hoc way.”
The government has to stop printing money and balance its budget without drastically cutting social services, a challenge since the bulk of state funds is spent on health, education, social welfare and food imports, he said.
In recent years, Cuba’s government has talked about subsidizing people in need instead of goods. That would free up money to import fuel, medicine and other items, LeoGrande said.
Cuban comedians have spoofed the ration book, creating a character named “Pánfilo” who sings a rhyming chorus in a recent video posted online: “Place the notebook in a cemetery, because it’s ready to be buried.”
On a recent sunny afternoon, Lázaro Cuesta, 56, stood in line to receive a daily allowance of two small bread rolls for him and his wife.
“Before it was 80 grams and cost 5 (Cuban) cents. Now it’s 40 grams and costs 75 cents,” he said. “And the quality is worse.”
Cuesta works in food preparation and earns 6,000 Cuban pesos ($12) a month. His wife, a retired nurse, receives 4,800 pesos ($10) in monthly pension. They also receive $200 a month from her brother and daughter who live abroad.
The remittances allow them to eat avocados, eggs and red beans and rice, Cuesta said.
“If not for the remittances,” he said as he grabbed his neck with his right hand, “hang yourself.”
Roughly 60% of Cubans on the island receive remittances, but Rosa Rodríguez, 54, of Havana is not one of them.
“Everything is scarce here — everything — even that wretched bread they give us,” Rodríguez said. She earns 4,000 Cuban pesos ($8) a month, which she said isn’t a bad salary for Cuba, but “no matter how hard you work, it’s simply not enough.”
Rodríguez said the only product she obtained at her assigned bodega in April was a donation of 4 pounds (1.8 kilograms) of rice, while she struggles to buy other basic goods.
“If you buy beans, then you can’t buy sugar,” she said, noting that most of her salary is spent on a large carton of eggs. “If I retire, I die.”
