Photos of bananas being handed out as a bonus to high school teachers in Guantanamo went viral on social media this week and became a joke that led to dozens of memes.

The Facebook post was deleted after it went viral, but it isn’t the first post that demonstrates the severe shortages Cubans suffer and how government “bonuses” take advantage of this scarcity. 

A problem that we can’t stomach

Not bananas from the Canary Islands, or from Costa Rica, or even platano macho (plantain). Teachers in Guantanamo were given burro bananas or fongo (as they’re known in the eastern part of Cuba). This variety of banana is native to Cuba and is known for having a thick peel. It is the worst kind of banana you can find in Cuba, but easy to grow. 

People either fry it when it’s still green to make chicharritas, or they are eaten on their own when ripe or with sugar, especially during hard times of hunger and poverty. It’s a food that “saves you”. 

Cubans still remember the recipe of “minced banana peel” which became popular during the so-called Special Period crisis of the 1990’s. Thirty years later, it’s this “lifesaving” food that proves this cyclic scarcity, which is almost a constant in Cubans’ lives and a cause of great grief. 

Right now, when a handful of seven or ten burro bananas cost between 100 and 250 pesos (depending on where they’re being sold) and a plantain can cost 35 CUP, going home with eight free bananas can be a “blessing” for many; especially if you bear in mind the fact the average monthly wage is 4000 pesos (around $17 USD) and when the rest of your wage is spent in a week on food like rice, chicken, eggs and cooking oil. 

Faced with this reality, jokes that centered around the teachers who posed smiling with their handful of bananas, without taking a look at the structural causes of the situation and without putting the Government at the heart of putting them in this situation, are unfair and lack any empathy.  

If any of them were to be asked, in the privacy of their own homes, just how much a handful of bananas had helped them, they would probably tell you a lot. 

The education sector has been one of the hardest hit by rampant inflation in Cuba. 

Even though statistics from Cuba’s Office of Statistics and Information (ONEI) say that teaching staff has increased by 31,638 since the 2018/2019 academic year to 2021/2022, Ministry of Education officials have confirmed in September in 2023 that there is a shortage of teachers, and that lots of the time, students aren’t being taught entire subjects for the entire academic year because there aren’t teachers in specific subjects. 

A TV feature revealed that there is a deficit of 17,278 teachers in MINED and 3200 of these are missing from middle school (88.9% of the teaching staff). 

Teachers are leaving the classroom, whether it’s because they’re migrating abroad or moving to better-paid sectors such as the private sector. 

Low wages are the main reason, but greater workloads for teachers, a lack of resources to teach classes and problems getting to work also influence their decision. 

It’s also common for retired teachers to be hired again, to increase their own incomes and because there’s a shortage of teachers.  

Teachers’ absence in classrooms is being reflected in students’ learning and their exam results, especially in university entrance exams, where results are a cause for concern.

In the 2023 entrance exams, out of the 21 942 aspiring university students who sat the exams in October, only 50.4 % (11,063) passed all three exams. Statistics prove two trends: a drop in the number of young people who want to graduate university (not to mention those who want to be teachers) and the gaps – in students’ education.   

The meaning of a banana

A year ago, a journalist from Santiago de Cuba posted on their social media profiles about how a neighbor had ended up stealing the only bunch of bananas he had in his back yard, because of food shortages. The bananas were still green and small. However, the neighbor, who the journalist has no hard feelings for, chose to cut them from the tree. 

In August 2023, an opinion survey on Artemisa TV revealed that a mother entered an okra field with her two children to take some of these vegetables. Why would they do this? How desperate does this family have to be? These were some of the questions that the state-controlled press didn’t ask when they gave this example about how values are diminishing in society today. 

Cuba’s food crisis is one of the population’s main concerns, and perhaps the most important. Putting a plate of food on the table is a challenge for families who have seen their wages become more and more devalued after Currency Reform was implemented in January 2021.

With rampant inflation, the Consumer Price Index constantly going up, the incomplete and late arrival of rationed goods, and the sale of basic essentials in foreign currency, a free banana is an incentive. It hurts to admit it, but it’s the cruel reality we’re living in. 

Cuban officials know this (but it doesn’t hurt them), so they are making the most of these “incentives” to sidestep their responsibility of ensuring a sustainable and effective solution. At the same time, they are demonstrating their lack of real commitment to the population’s wellbeing, implementing strategies that could also be interpreted as mere attempts to garner favor or calm discontent at the time, instead of undertaking concrete and long-lasting actions to improve living conditions.

What a bonus reveals

This isn’t the first time that food as a bonus have made Cubans laugh. In August 2021, boxer Ronnis Alvarez received a food basket in recognition of him winning a medal at a qualifying championship for the Pan American Games, that took place in Guadalajara. 

In recent years, the State is choosing to give sausages, bananas, cooking oil, fruit, vegetables, or chicken as gifts to Cubans who exceed in their professions, because of the severe economic and food crisis.

This might be a practical helping hand for some, but it’s also a symbolic gesture that reveals and admits the tough situation teachers are in – in the case of shortages -, and that it does very little to help the needs of all Cubans.

While it might seem the opposite in today’s context, it’s the wrong kind of incentive and even displays a lack of understanding of teachers’ needs and value for their work, especially when what they need is substantial improvements to their working conditions and wages.

A handful of bananas is great for a teacher – and many Cubans today – but the “recognition” just goes to show how basic incentives have become the bare minimum due to a lack of resources and the Government’s incompetence. 

It even diverts attention away from the pressing need to find an effective solution to improve Cubans’ lives. The Government is the one ridiculing teachers – and any other professional – by handing out these “bonuses”. 

No matter how necessary a handful of bananas may be nowadays, it parodies compensation for teachers, ignores their valuable contribution and undermines their professional dignity. More so when they are still at the front of a classroom when there is a great shortage of teachers in the sector. 

A Government that chooses to hand out bananas to its teachers as a superficial gesture, while it does nothing to resolve the underlying food crisis that affects all of society is hypocritical, to say the least.

It’s the Government’s responsibility to improve teachers’, and Cubans’, living and working conditions. It’s up to the Cuban people to demand them, rather than being content with a box of chicken or a handful of bananas. 

This article was translated into English from the original in Spanish.