Cuba Goes from the Mariel Egg Attacks to the Luxury Egg
The energy crisis and inflation have turned a food that for decades was plentiful on Cuban tables into an almost exclusive commodity.
HAVANA TIMES – “You folks definitely had electricity last night,” a woman selling plastic shopping bags scolds me outside the Tulipán market. She lives on the other side of Rancho Boyeros Avenue and could see from her neighborhood that our apartment building remained lit while her block was engulfed in darkness. The newest source of tension among Cubans is no longer politics, or even food—it is the number of hours some enjoy electricity while others are learning to live in the shadows.
Just a few months ago, the Facebook pages of Cuba’s Electric Union were flooded with comments demanding that those of us in Havana endure the same endless blackouts suffered by the rest of the country. That wish was granted—but only halfway. Now the capital also experiences power outages lasting more than 24 consecutive hours, yet nothing has improved in the provinces. The hours we spend without electricity have not lit a single additional light bulb in Santiago de Cuba, Holguín, or Pinar del Río. They have merely distributed the darkness more evenly.
Dividing us and turning us against one another seems to have been an all-too-effective strategy. While we argue over who suffered more from the heat the previous night, who lost the contents of their refrigerator, or who managed to charge a cell phone, we stop looking at those who have mismanaged an electrical system that is collapsing. So, I avoid responding defensively. Instead, I tell the woman that the Antonio Guiteras thermoelectric plant has just gone offline and that, most likely, by the following dawn both she and I will be trying to fall asleep drenched in sweat and tormented by mosquitoes.
I say goodbye and continue toward Ayestaran until I reach Carlos III. Then I take Aramburu toward San Lazaro. Along the way, I stumble upon a surprise. The blackouts have accomplished something that neither price controls nor state inspections had managed to do: lower the price of a carton of eggs. Just a couple of weeks ago it cost 3,200 pesos; now it has dropped to 2,400, and in some private businesses a sign advertises the “special of the day”: 2,300 pesos for 30 eggs. The price cut is not due to increased production or an improving economy. It is simply the result of not having enough electricity to refrigerate food.
With so many hours without power, few people are willing to buy large quantities of food. A refrigerator without electricity turns any purchase into a race against the clock and the tropical heat. Merchants need to sell before their products spoil, and customers buy only what they are certain they can consume quickly.
As I look at the stacks of egg cartons piled at the entrance of a small shop, I think about how dramatically the fate of this food has changed. In the 1980s, when Soviet subsidies sustained the illusion of endless abundance, children in elementary school mocked classmates by saying that “all they ate at home was eggs.” The product overflowed in the markets, appeared far too often in workplace cafeterias, and many people turned up their noses at it. No one could have imagined then that it would one day become a luxury item.
It also became political ammunition. During the 1980 Mariel boatlift, hundreds of people had eggs thrown at their faces or at the fronts of their homes simply because they wanted to leave the supposed socialist paradise. What was plentiful in people’s pantries was used to humiliate those who chose to depart.
More than four decades later, not a trace of that contempt remains. The egg has climbed the social ladder to occupy a privileged place on the Cuban table. People dream of it fried, boiled, poached, or made into an omelet large enough to feed the whole family. Its price also influences the cost of many other foods. When eggs become more expensive, so do birthday cakes, pastries, croquettes, breaded foods, cold salads, and virtually any recipe that needs a bit of egg white or yolk to hold it together.
Round and fragile, the egg now behaves like an aristocrat who visits only those tables that can afford its demanding price. Those children who once mocked a classmate because his family ate scrambled eggs several times a week would probably now long to be able to serve such a meal to their own children. But to do so they need not only enough money to pay the steep price of eggs, but also sufficient electricity to keep them from spoiling.
Finally, when I return from my long walk through Centro Habana, the woman selling shopping bags is no longer outside the Tulipan market. Tonight, she will probably look once again toward our apartment building to see whether our electricity has also been cut. In both her refrigerator and mine, there is very likely not a single egg left, for fear of the next blackout.
First published in Spanish by 14ymedio and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.