Cuba's informal market finds new space on growing internet

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Tens of thousands of Cubans have starting buying and selling everything from chicken and milk to medicine and pregnancy tests on myriad apps that have provided digital access to the country’s not-very-clandestine black market.

With shortages and economic turmoil at the worst they’ve been in years, the online marketplace “has exploded,” Torres said.

Many products are sold in pesos, but higher-priced items are often listed in dollars, with payments either handled in cash or through bank transfers outside the country. “This medicine goes to the people who need it, people who have respiratory issues,” he said. “Those who use them are people who really need them. ... More than anything else, we sell antibiotics.”

So people on the island tend to be highly resourceful, working with whatever they have available to them — think old cars from the 1950s that still roll through the streets, thanks to mechanics using ingenuity and spare parts to address a shortage of new vehicles.Entrepreneurs have used the same creativity to deal with what was initially very limited internet access.

Between 2000 and 2021 the number of Cubans using the internet rose from less than 1% of the population to 71%,shows. The internet was a lifeline for Heriberto and many other Cubans during the COVID-19 pandemic, they said. Government officials have said the internet is important for the country’s economic growth — but have treated it with a “grudging acceptance,” said Valerie Wirtschafter, a senior data analyst at the Brookings Institution who tracks internet usage in Cuba.Perhaps the most visible example came when mass protests erupted in 2021, largely thanks to rapidly spreading communications on social media sites including Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram and Telegram.

 

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Muy bueno esto, meganjanetsky

cc grohmann_rafael

Socialism craves Capitalism. Not the other way around. Take notes.

Cubans want a free market, but the regime stands in their way.

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