Cuba’s informal market finds new space on growing internet
By MEGAN JANETSKY, Associated Press
HAVANA — In the Telegram group chat, the messages roll in like waves.
“I need liquid ibuprofen and acetaminophen please,” one user wrote. “It’s urgent, it’s for my 10-month-old baby.”
Others offer medicine brought from outside Cuba, adding: “Write me in a direct message.” Emoji-spotted lists offer antibiotics, pregnancy tests, vitamins, rash creams and more.
The group message, which includes 170,000 people, is just one of many that have flourished in Cuba in recent years along with an exponential increase in internet use on the communist-ruled island.
The informal sale of everything from eggs to car parts – the country’s so-called black market – is a time-honored practice in crisis-stricken Cuba, where access to the most basic items such as milk, chicken, medicine and cleaning products has always been limited. is limited. The market is technically illegal, but the extent of illegality, in official eyes, can vary according to the type of items being sold and how they were obtained.
Before the Internet, such exchanges took place “through your contacts, your neighbors, your local community,” says Ricardo Torres, a Cuban and economics fellow at American University in Washington. “But now, through the Internet, you can reach out to an entire province.”
With shortages and economic turmoil at their worst in years, the online market has “exploded”, Torres said.
Busy WhatsApp groups discuss the informal exchange rate, which provides more pesos per dollar or euro than the official bank rate.
Meanwhile, Cuba’s versions of Craigslist — sites like Revolico, the island’s first digital buy-and-sell tool — advertise everything from electric bicycles brought in from other countries to “capitalist apartments” in Havana’s wealthy districts.
Many products are sold in pesos, but more expensive items are often listed in dollars, with payments handled in cash or through bank transfers outside the country.
While wealthier Cubans — or those with families who send money from abroad — can afford more lavish items, many basic items remain unaffordable for people like Leonardo, a government employee who asked that his real name not be used because he fears retaliation from the government fear. .
Three months ago, Leonardo began buying items such as inhalers, antibiotics and rash cream from friends who had arrived from other countries, then reselling them online for a small profit. Government authorities are highly critical of such “revendedores,” or resellers, especially those who buy products in Cuban stores and then sell them at a higher price.
In late October, President Miguel Díaz-Canel called for a crackdown on the practice, referring to the retaliators as “criminals, swindlers, fighting, lazy and corrupt.”
“What we cannot allow is that those who do not work, do not contribute and break the law earn more and have more opportunities to live well than those who really contribute,” he said during a meeting with government officials. “If we did that … we would break the concepts of socialism.”
But Leonardo said he and others like him are just trying to get by.
“This medicine goes to the people who need it, people who have breathing problems,” he said. “Those who use it are people who really need it. … More than anything else, we sell antibiotics.”
With the money he earned from his sales, Leonardo was able to buy soap and food, as well as antibiotics and vitamins for his elderly parents.
The rise of the new digital marketplaces speaks to a particular brand of creative resilience that Cubans have developed during decades of economic turmoil. Much of the crisis is the result of the US government’s six-decade trade embargo on the island, but critics say it is also due to the government’s mismanagement of the economy and unwillingness to embrace the private sector.
People on the island therefore tend to be highly resourceful and work with whatever they have at their disposal – think old cars from the 1950s still rolling through the streets thanks to mechanics using ingenuity and spare parts to make up for a shortage of new ones addressing vehicles.
Entrepreneurs used the same creativity to deal with what was initially very limited Internet access. Carlos Javier Peña and Hiram Centelles, Cuban expatriates living in Spain, created Revolico in 2007 to help “alleviate the hardships of life in Cuba.”
They kept the site design simple, similar to Craigslist, to match the island’s slow internet. But in 2008 — the same year the government lifted a ban on the sale of personal computers — it blocked access to Revolico. The ban remained in place until 2016. Meanwhile, Peña and Centelles used digital tools and different hosting sites to jump the firewall.
However, using the site was still a challenge for many, given the lack of mobile internet.
Heriberto, a university student in 2008, was able to access it through a small monthly internet package given to him by the school. Others asked friends and family to buy them items while they were at work, where they sometimes had Internet access.
“These markets often don’t have the things you’re looking for,” says Heriberto, now 33, who asked that only his first name be used because he also fears the consequences of the government. “So you develop this habit of looking in the store first. Then if they don’t have it, you look at Revolico.”
Sales on WhatsApp, Facebook and Telegram really started to pick up in 2018, when Cubans gained access to the internet on their phones, something American university fellow Torres described as a “game changer”.
Between 2000 and 2021, the number of Cubans using the Internet rose from less than 1% of the population to 71%, data from the International Telecommunications Union shows. The Internet has been a lifeline for Heriberto and many other Cubans during the COVID-19 pandemic, they said.
Now, with the island’s main economic sector, tourism, still recovering, many have built entire businesses on the online sale of goods – both basic necessities like medicine, as well as much more expensive specialty items. Heriberto recently used the site to sell a mountain bike that he priced in dollars.
Revolico co-founder Centelles says the site and similar tools have evolved to adapt to an ever-changing Cuba. As the island experiences crippling blackouts, for example, sales of generators and rechargeable batteries have soared, he said.
Government officials have said the Internet is important to the country’s economic growth — but have treated it with a “gruesome acceptance,” said Valerie Wirtschafter, a senior data analyst at the Brookings Institution who tracks Internet use in Cuba.
“They’ve never really been able to control the Internet in many ways,” Wirtschafter said.
Perhaps the most visible example came when mass protests broke out in 2021, largely thanks to rapidly spreading communications on social media sites including Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram and Telegram. The government blocked many important social media and messaging sites for a number of days to prevent protests from spreading.
While Leonardo said he considered it risky to sell on Telegram, “at the end of the day you need medicine … so you accept that risk.”
Heriberto still uses Revolico, but he said he now prefers sites like Facebook that offer a level of anonymity. On those sites, he can sell with a fake profile, he said, unlike Revolico, which requires you to post your phone number.
“It’s a basic necessity now,” Heriberto said. “The Internet arrived in Cuba, and now it is fundamental.”
