Black market as public service? How Cubans respond to food shortages.

Nearly every morning when Yuli opens the front door of her apartment in central Havana, someone is already waiting outside. Older people and the occasional teenager or young parent from the neighborhood knock on the door and loiter out front, peering through her window to try to catch a glimpse of what’s inside.

They’re looking for food.

Cuba is grappling with its worst food shortages in more than two decades, and a tanking, inefficient economy means many people are struggling to find the bare necessities. Yuli is part of one of several grassroots efforts to patch the holes left by the shortages.

She can do that because she is privileged. Relatives in the United States send her cash, which allows her to enter exclusive, hard-currency-only grocery stores. She uses her remittances to buy chicken, milk, hot dogs, and even shampoo, and then resells those goods out of her home to some of her most vulnerable neighbors.

Taking somewhat of a modern-day Robin Hood approach, she offers resale prices that are two to three times lower than the going rate on the more traditional black market. That’s where most citizens are forced to turn if they need something specific or can’t afford to wait in hourslong lines at government stores or bare markets that accept Cuban pesos.

“I always post online when I have something for sale, but people come even when I don’t post, and I have to turn them away,” says Yuli, a biologist who asked to use only her first name because reselling – whether or not for profit ­– is against the law in Cuba. “It’s hard because these are people who don’t have much, and they probably can’t afford to buy from anyone else.”

Over the past two years, the Cuban economy has suffered repeated blows. Tourism, its most important source of foreign exchange, dwindled during the pandemic, inflation hit 70% last year, local food production is falling, and more recently Russia’s attack on Ukraine has upped oil prices and threatened greater shortages.

Today’s inflation woes “have an impact above all on food,” says Pavel Vidal, a Cuban economist who teaches at Universidad Javeriana in Colombia.

The black market, illegal but by no means clandestine, is the only place to find many essentials. Business is dominated by resellers, known as revendedores, who have the dollars or euros needed to shop in the special stores, and contacts who alert them when a shop has been restocked. They often clear the shelves of a particular product and sell it at up to seven times the original price.

But not everyone is looking to use their advantages to turn a profit. As hunger and desperation grow, more and more resellers, like Yuli, are focused primarily on feeding their neighbors. WhatsApp groups advertising what people have to offer, or what they are on the hunt for, have proliferated. Daily stoop sales, where neighbors can barter children’s clothes for soap, or a rice cooker for a fan, are increasingly common.

It is at once a reflection both of this moment in Cuba, when shortages are acute, and of an enduring characteristic of Cuban society. Creative solidarity, needed to bridge the gaps left by the island’s political and economic realities, is a virtue that has been passed down from generation to generation.

“There’s a reactivation of social networks,” says Osnaide Izquierdo Quintana, a professor of economic sociology at the University of Havana, who studies informal markets. “This process is creating a strong culture of solidarity and shifting people’s attitudes toward everyone around them.”

“The only way to find anything”

For the past two years the pandemic has reduced trade and tourism, accentuating the impact of the U.S. embargo, and the Cuban government is low on dollars and other hard currencies. To shore up its foreign reserves, the government began selling some products in special stores, exclusively in currencies like dollars or euros.

Only those receiving remittances from abroad or earning foreign currency may enter these types of grocery stores. Since it is illegal to trade pesos for dollars on the island, and the government doesn’t sell dollars at banks, access to such stores is a valuable privilege.

Every Cuban citizen receives a certain amount of rice, bread, and soap from the government, but these provisions are insufficient.

It can take all day for Cubans to collect the items necessary for dinner: a few hours waiting in line to get into a store to buy powdered milk, another hour in another line for bread, and possibly two hours more waiting for chicken somewhere else. The lengthy waits often take place under the pounding sun, in 90 degree heat.

“No one goes to work anymore because you just wait in line near your office; then you wait in line near your home. Then you still might not be able to get what you need,” says Luis Miguel, who trained as a teacher but works as a janitor and dockworker to pay his rent and afford food. “Buy-and-sell groups are the only way to find anything. Without them, what are you going to eat?” he asks, abandoning the line at a bakery. It’s almost closing time, and clear that those still waiting won’t get any bread today.

Standing over a steaming pot of brothy drumsticks in her kitchen on a recent evening, Yuli says any profit she might make selling items goes toward buying more. She is known for her low-priced chicken and sausages, two items in high demand. Yuli knows she’s privileged to have family sending U.S. dollars – and a contact who can tip her off when a shop is going to be stocked – so she typically sells her products at the store’s ticket price, except for the rare occasions when she’s short on rent.

“I don’t like to charge too much. It doesn’t feel right,” she says. “There isn’t anyone who isn’t poor.”

That attitude exemplifies a particularly Cuban manner of facing difficulties, says Elena Gentili, Oxfam International’s country director here. The island’s history of recurring hard times has given rise to learned strategies that show how “important the value of solidarity is, and how resilient the Cuban people are,” says Ms. Gentili. “Community networks, which now include WhatsApp and other social media, are key to overcoming shortages.”

Yeni, a university student in Havana, is the administrator of several large buy-and-sell groups on WhatsApp. Together, they have thousands of members who post daily, advertising tubes of deodorant or asking who has seen pork for sale nearby.

“Everyone in Cuba was already ... selling a little bit of everything, because of the shortages,” she says. She considers her work – tracking down difficult-to-locate products and making sure members are civil in their online interactions – a public service, even if it, too, is illegal.

“The community market has become fundamental,” says Dr. Izquierdo Quintana.