In the picture
Havana Street [Ansalmo Juvaga].
The Cuban government has not been able to alleviate the serious economic crisis the island is suffering. The measures implemented, such as those adopted in this 2025, not only have little result, but also create conditions for an increase in social inequality, which the Cuban Communist Party itself has admitted as a problem. The partial dollarization of the Economics highlights social differences; the end of the supply book opens the door to a decentralization in the access to some foods that may generate territorial discriminations; the timid development of the private sector is following racial guidelines, contrary to what has always been the official speech of the regime.
Cuba's minimal statistical data , as well as its opacity in census information, make it difficult to determine the socioeconomic imbalances experienced by Cubans. As a communist state, the Castro regime has always claimed to have overcome the structural inequalities derived from the capitalist system, but -in addition to the usual advantages obtained by those who belong to the nomenklatura- the new economic measures implemented to try to overcome the serious crisis the island is going through are creating the conditions to accentuate inequality.
At the beginning of 2025, the government of Miguel Díaz launched a partial dollarization of the Cuban Economics in view of the ineffectiveness of previous measures that the regime has been establishing in recent years. In 2021 it already launched a monetary reform that eliminated the convertible peso, a currency parallel to the normal Cuban peso that sought to take advantage of a less unfavorable exchange rate against the dollar, but the Government did not obtain the progress sought The hope was to attract foreign currency, but the poor performance of tourism that has not recovered the figures prior to the Covid-1 pandemic, has led the regime to take a further step towards the dollar, admitting its free use in certain areas. This is intended to collect part of the foreign currency that otherwise circulates in an irregular way and to encourage the sending of those that can be sent to their relatives by those who are outside the island.
But only a very restricted part of the population can move in dollars and this widens social differences. This can be seen in the food sector, where supermarkets have emerged that operate in dollars. This is the case of the 'Mercatoria' supermarket, which has both physical stores and home delivery service, and accepts Visa, Mastercard, Discover and Union Pay cards as payment methods, but not cards issued by Cuban banks. Despite this opening, shortages limit the products on sale: in the 'Mercatoria' catalog you will find a wide variety of sunscreens, chocolate cookies and canned goods, but only one subject of powdered milk that can be purchased for $8.13. Another example is the supermarket at '3ra y 70', where you can find a variety of products at prices inaccessible to most citizens: it does not accept pesos or freely convertible currency: those who can buy there do so with dollars sent from abroad.
In fact, the crisis is increasing the issue of poor people, according to the Cuban Observatory for Human Rights. This entity located abroad indicated that in 2024, 86% of Cuban households were on the margins of survival, while 61% had problems to buy the essentials to survive (an evident worsening, since in 2022 these figures were 76% and 24% respectively).
The government has tried to improve the status with an increase in the average official salary, which in 2024 stood at 5,839 pesos per month (about 240 dollars). But this increase of 25.6% compared to the 4,654 pesos in 2023 was only in line with the inflation experienced by the country, which last year was around 25%.
Territorial differences
One of the problems facing Cuba is food shortages. According to an October 2024 report from the U.S. department Agriculture, the island's domestic production has been declining since 2016, and has been especially affected by floods, droughts and hurricanes. Currently, production, mainly of corn and rice, does not meet the basic dietary needs of the Cuban population, and the falling currency makes it difficult to import inputs, fertilizers and fuel, in addition to reducing the purchasing power of the population. Leaving aside, for lack of data , Cuba's trade flows with Russia, Venezuela or Vietnam (which in reality do not constitute a special relief for the island's needs), the report places the European Union, the United States and Brazil as the main suppliers of food products to Cuba, and the European Union, China and Switzerland as the main destinations of Cuban production.
These difficulties to import and also to produce food led the government to announce at the end of last year the abolition in 2025 of the supply book, a rationing system that was in force for more than six decades with the goal of ensuring a minimum and equal access to basic foodstuffs. The reduction of supplies places a singular stress on the distribution of stocks among the population, especially in establishing which priorities should be addressed. In addition to the controversies generated by the distribution of chicken meat, in December 2024, Cuban Prime Minister Manuel Marrero announced the disappearance of the Cuban Bread Chain, with the goal of decentralizing and thus improving the production and distribution of this food, which would remain in the hands of the municipalities. The repercussions of this measure and the generalized shortage of core topic supplies such as flour and oil have not taken long to affect the population. Decentralization may aggravate inequalities within an island that is already deeply fragmented.
Different income according to skin color
There are also income inequalities that follow racial patterns as the development the small private sector tends to be more dynamic among the white population. That private sector began with the 2011 reforms, with people who could work on their own account -something that on the island has become known as 'cuentapropismo'-, and ten years later it was expanded with the possibility of creating companies with employees, in the form of non-state enterprises with limited liability. These are micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs), which the Cuban government allows to be set up with up to 100 workers.
A study published in 2021 already warned about the social inequality, in this case according to skin color, that was being created by the minimal opening to the private sector, based on the experience of "cuentapropismo" (self-employment). The authors, who had access to detailed census data and were able to compare it with other information, indicated in their analysis that, although "racial stratification has little impact in areas such as Education, health, some occupations and leadership positions", the same cannot be said with respect to the private sector. This is "a strikingly racialized and expanding private sector" that "is generating deep income gaps based on skin color, beyond the reach of official census data ".
The authors considered that the censuses supported "many of the egalitarian principles that dominate the official speech . However, findings based on other data endorsed "an alternative speech : there are social and economic Structures that generate and deepen racial inequalities in Cuba today.
Thus, despite the regime's insistence that there is no institutionalized or structural racial discrimination in Cuba, in November 2019 the committee of Ministers was forced to approve a national program against racism and racial discrimination. The official pressgrade defined its goal as that of "combating and definitively eliminating the vestiges of racism, racial prejudice and racial discrimination that persist in Cuba".