HAVANA (AP) — Ever-widening access to the internet is offering a new opportunity for Cubans looking for hard-to-obtain basic goods: online shopping. Tens of thousands of people 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. Such unsanctioned transactions are a time-honored practice in crisis-stricken Cuba, where access to the most basic items has always been limited. Cuban national Ricardo Torres is an economics fellow at American University in Washington. He notes that the informal market used to be limited to neighbors and local communities. Now, he says, the internet provides shoppers and sellers with access to entire provinces.
Cuba’s informal market finds new space on growing internet
