Cuban Family Survives on Under $60 a Month by Reselling 100 Bread Rolls, Repairing Electronics
Updated
Updated · The New York Times · Jul 7
Cuban Family Survives on Under $60 a Month by Reselling 100 Bread Rolls, Repairing Electronics
1 articles · Updated · The New York Times · Jul 7
Summary
$60 a month or less sustains a four-generation family in Santiago de Cuba, where Adrián Silva Guerra repairs electronics and his mother resells bread to cover basic meals.
100 bread rolls bought at 7 cents and resold at 9 cents provide one of the household’s few cash sources, alongside Silva Guerra’s repair work and his father’s primary-school teaching.
2:08 a.m. power returns dictate when that work can happen: Silva Guerra wakes to solder salvaged television parts during brief electricity windows before outages plunge the home back into darkness again.
The family’s routines capture Cuba’s deepening humanitarian and power crisis, with erratic electricity and scarce income forcing households into overnight labor and tiny-margin hustles to survive.