The price of pork meat at Cuba markets has always worked as a thermometer to measure the state of the domestic economy.
By Natalia Lopez Moya (14ymedio)
HAVANA TIMES – It became so common on Cuban tables that someone proposed to remove from the national shield the Cuban tocororo, that bird that few have seen, to replace it with a good chubby pig. Pork was our Thanksgiving turkey, our Mother’s Day delicacy, our Christmas dish and our December 31 dinner. Nobody questioned the crown ingredient of festivities, the protein of family meals and the protagonist of the boxes that were sold in street stalls.
But Don Cochino has changed and is no longer seen on solemn occasions. This week, in the 19 and B market of El Vedado, Havana, the price of a pound of pork reached 1,000 pesos, twice as much as a year ago. For their part, the offers with skin, fat and bone are up to 900 and for ribs with little to bite you must pay 850. That increase, a few weeks before the New Year’s Eve celebrations, augurs a Christmas without chicharrones or masitas fritas [fried pork chunks] in many homes.
Note: Most Cubans earn under 4,000 pesos a month and most worker pensions are under 2,000.
“Here I have 5,000 pesos, and this is not enough for two meals for the four people in my house,” lamented a woman in front of the butcher counter. Shortly before, she had managed to discreetly get 20 dollars from an informal money changer at the entrance. “With what’s left of my money, which is not even 2,000 pesos, I am going to buy some tomatoes and a cabbage,” she sighed.
If in November 2023 a pound of pork reached 500 pesos, which made many Cubans raise their eyebrows and clutch their wallets, the beginning of this year behaved like a launch pad that boosted the price, which in April exceeded 1,200 pesos. By May, it seemed that the rise was beginning to slow down, but in the last quarter of the year it gained height again.
The price of pork has always functioned as a thermometer to measure the state of the Cuban domestic economy. While a few decades ago the calculation separated families according to the part of the animal they managed to eat, now it has only two categories: those who cannot afford to sink their tooth into a piece of pork and those who still manage to pay for the meat of what was called “the national mammal.”
“When I was a child my family was humble, my mother worked in the gas company and my father was a driver on Route 22, but in my house they bought steaks, legs, liver and even heart,” recalls Alejandro, a resident in Old Havana who this Thursday tried to buy a pork shoulder in a market on Monte Street. “I couldn’t. When the butcher weighed the piece, it was above 10,000 pesos, crazy.”
“My dad, in the 80s, guaranteed with his salary that we would not miss the year-end pork,” he recalls. Alejandro’s family, without having a high income, was among those who could afford to roast a medium-sized leg for New Year’s Eve. “There were some neighbors who had very few resources and bought fat, neck or even ears, but no one was left without their little piece of pork.”
Now, Alejandro, his wife and their three children have been on the other side of the measurement. The line that divides those who can afford a piece of pig, whatever part of the animal, has thrown them into the area of those who must be content with savoring the memories. “The smell of pork can’t be hidden. When you fry chicharrones it’s like when you cook shrimp, lobster or squid: everyone in the neighborhood knows what you’re doing,” says this 51-year-old from Havana.
“When that smell comes from a house on my block, everyone draws their own conclusions: that family has money and lots of it, because pork is very expensive.” Alejandro does not rule out that some even open the windows and leave the door of the living room open so that the aroma floods the neighborhood and exhibits their purchasing power.
“A plate of pork now says more about your pocketbook than a gold chain,” he jokes. “Look, if you go out on the street with a piece of fried pork hanging around your neck it will cause more of a stir than if you wore an 18-carat gold chain.” In his opinion, the rise in the price of pork is largely due to the fall in national production and the arrival on the market of a product imported mainly from the United States.
In the area of Alquízar, current province of Artemisa and former land of pig-breeding to nourish the voracious appetite of the habaneros, “the guajiros no longer want to dedicate themselves to this business,” confirms Mildred, who together with her husband supplied pork loins, with or without skin, with or without bone, to numerous residents of Nuevo Vedado, in the Cuban capital. “There is no feed for the animals,” she says.
“The breeding cycle was broken a few year ago when many females were slaughtered due to a lack of feed. Now people raise pigs for their own consumption and to sell a few animals. The Cuban pig that is currently bred cannot compete with the one that comes from the U.S., neither in size nor quality of meat, and much less in presentation.”
An American pork loin, from the Smithfield brand, is sold in private shops at a price of 1,100 pesos per pound, but “it is clean, very well packaged and with very little fat,” says Mildred. The lean pieces, the sanitary check stamps and the “Made in USA” sign attract more than “the legs full of flies hanging from the hooks of the agromarkets.”
“Most farmers have to slaughter the animal early in the morning to sell it the same day because there is no way to transport refrigerated pieces,” she points out. “In addition, here the pigs are stunted because they hardly let them grow. The lack of food accelerates the slaughter and does not allow them to be fattened. Before you could fatten up three pigs; now you can’t even bring one to a decent size.”
Mildred’s family, however, has saved their leg for the end of the year. “My brother bought it for me. He left a couple of months ago and is now in Tapachula, waiting for the appointment to enter the United States and working as a welder.” The piece that will delight the family on December 31 comes from Brazil. “We are crossing our fingers that there is no other big blackout because we have it frozen.”
If the national electrical system collapses again and the pork for December spoils, no one can predict how much a pound of pork will cost. The animal has already earned a place on the national coat of arms of the dreamed-about Cuba. In that coat of arms, the chubby animal frolics in an idyllic field with a lonely palm. On its head a key in the middle of two pieces of land is the symbol of an Island, in a strategic commercial and political position, that no one inhabits.
Translated by Regina Anavy for Translating Cuba.
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