Hard Grind in Cuban Bakeries

Residents of the city of Santa Clara in central Cuba say bakeries there are selling substandard bread made with adulterated raw materials.

As a staple item, bread is one of the foodstuffs provided to all Cuban citizens via a rationing system. “Standard bread” comes in loaves weighing 80 grams and is a heavily subsidised so that it costs 0.05 pesos, making it affordable to all in a country where the average monthly wage is 466 pesos (17.5 US dollars).

The state-run Food Production Company has 24 bakeries in Santa Clara tasked with making enough “standard bread” each day to supply the city’s 239,000 inhabitants.

Unsubsidised bread is also available at the equivalent of 50 US cents a loaf from a chain of bakeries called Panaderías de la Cadena. They sell in convertible pesos, a separate currency maintained on a par with the US dollar.

On paper, the state-run bakeries meet and sometimes even exceed their targets. In reality, there are constant complaints from customers because flour and other ingredients are often supplied in insufficient quantities or in poor condition, or are pilfered and replaced with inferior products.

“We’re eating black bread like the Russians,” complained Rosa María Marín, a retired woman who lives in the city’s Brisas del Oeste neighbourhood.

Another customer added, “That isn’t comparable – the bread is black here due to negligence, whereas in Russia it’s meant to be black.”

A bakery manager who asked to remain anonymous said that bakeries only received half the amount of oil they needed, just enough to grease the trays and the workers’ hands, while the flour supplied by the Cienfuegos Cereal Company in a neighbouring province was often of poor quality.

Frightened of being blamed for bread shortages, bakers mix good and bad flour together.

Mario Pérez Gómez, a baker in the José Martí neighbourhood, recalled one day in August when a batch of discoloured and bad-smelling flour was delivered. Managers complained to the cereal company’s quality control department but were instructed to use the flour anyway.

Just days later, another delivery arrived which Pérez Gómez says “smelled of cockroaches”. Staff were told to combine it with good flour.

“They made bread half with good-quality flour and the other half with the insect’s characteristic stench,” Pérez Gómez said.

Staff at state bakeries are paid half the average national wage, 225 pesos a month, and only get that if they achieve production targets, otherwise they are paid according to the proportion of the quota they have met.

This encourages some to boost their earnings by selling off flour on the side. The head baker is in charge of the ingredients listed in the regulation recipes, and often sells some on the black market, sharing the profits with other employees. The illicit income can be as much as 1,200 pesos a week.

One source who did not want to be named described how a manager ordered bakery workers to paint their shop fronts ahead of a high-level inspection. When they asked for paint, the manager told them they should pay for it out of their illegal earnings.

The authorities occasionally send in teams of inspectors who arrive unannounced at night and have powers to penalise offenders, for example by getting them suspended from their jobs.

One such inspection revealed that a bakery manager had hidden away 110 loaves of bread which he said were past their best, but which he actually intended to sell on the black market.

Ada Olimpia is an independent journalist in Cuba.