After learning that her children in Miami purchased food goods online and had them transported to Havana, Maria Paez is relieved. The shipment contained eggs, ham, and yogurt.
Due to the current dire economic situation and food shortages, Cubans living overseas are choosing more and more to send care packages rather than money transfers to their relatives back home.
“Receiving these types of products is a relief for us” and, “in terms of spending money, the savings are substantial,” Paez, a 59-year-old mathematics graduate told AFP.
“Receiving eggs is very important” because “it is a guaranteed breakfast,” added Paez, who has lived alone with her husband since their two children emigrated to the United States.
She received eighteen things in total, a lifeline in Cuba during its worst economic crisis in thirty years, when there are shortages of fuel, food, and medicine.
On the communist island, where the average pay is 4,800 pesos, a carton of thirty eggs now costs 3,300 pesos ($27,50) due to double-digit inflation over the past few years.
The dire economic conditions in Cuba have forced about 5% of the population to leave in recent years.
With rising demand, online retailers shipping necessities to Cuba have experienced a decline in business.
The majority reside in the US, where there are two million Cubans, but they have also spread to Mexico, Canada, and Spain.
In Cuba, packages of food commodities that are either in low supply or whose costs have escalated since the government authorized private-owned businesses in 2021 are delivered by hundreds of delivery vans and private automobiles on a daily basis.
