Cuban 'Amazons' deliver 'absolutely essential' food during crisis

LOUISVILLE - Carmen Deulofeu tapped a few buttons on her laptop in Kentucky, and 1,000 miles away in Havana, her sister suddenly could feed her family.

Basics that are often absent from Cuba's grocery shelves or unattainable on a Cuban salary were all available on an easy-to-use website: Kidney beans. Chicken legs. Powdered milk. Cooking oil. Eggs. Sugar. Café.

Add to cart. Click. Pay.

Deulofeu, 68, had the food delivered to her sister's family in Havana using Supermarket23, one of several online delivery companies playing a crucial role as Cuba deteriorates. Even as the communist country proposes reforms, the United States continues a pressure campaign, ramping up economic sanctions and maintaining an oil embargo that has plunged much of the island into darkness.

Services such as Supermarket23, Cuballama, Mercatoria, and Katapulk - known as "Cuban Amazons" - allow Cubans abroad to send everything from food to solar-powered lanterns to loved ones back home. Most offer mobile apps, making the process as easy as ordering a Cuban sandwich on Uber Eats from your smartphone.

The use of "jámazon," a portmanteau combining the Cuban slang for eating and the U.S. online retailer Amazon, is "absolutely essential" right now, Deulofeu said. So much so that even these online food delivery services have come under U.S. scrutiny.

In the past, Deulofeu would send money so her family could buy what they needed. But scarcity is everywhere. And it's just not food. "She's out of shampoo, out of soap, out of detergent," she said.

Deulofeu's 75-year-old sister, a retired optometrist, broke into tears recently on the phone, asking for more help. She declined to speak to USA TODAY for fear the Cuban government would retaliate against her.

But within a few days, thanks to these companies, Deulofeu could send her sister necessities with just a few clicks.

"She worked her whole life," Deulofeu said, "and now has to rely on us to survive."

Mobile phones lead to mobile supermarkets

The online revolution arrived in Cuba in 2018.

That year, the Cuban government allowed its people for the first time to access the internet on smartphones, introducing Cubans to phone-based apps, said Ted Henken, professor of Cuban studies at Baruch College and co-author of "Cuba's Digital Revolution: Citizen Innovation and State Policy."

As Cubans fled the island in droves - more than 2.6 million have left since 2020, according to Cuban demographer Juan Carlos Albizu-Campos - they used the apps to help their family left behind. Exiled Cubans here used U.S.-based online platforms, such as Cuballama and Katapulk, to send goods to families still on the island, Henken said.

Once a month, Alejandro de Lucia, 62, a Cuban native living in Long Island, launches the Supermarket23 app and selects meats, rice and other items to send to his in-laws in Cojimar, who are in their 80s. He's also sent them fans and batteries via Cuballama.

De Lucia said the items are pricier than what he'd find at the local Costco or Target, but as the situation continues to spiral in Cuba, the deliveries have become essential. Even government rations, like rice, are scarce.

"In Cuba, there isn't even food," he said.

For $35 plus $8 shipping, a family in Florida could tap a few buttons on their iPhone and send four pounds of smoked pork, a liter of cooking oil, and a carton of 30 eggs - items increasingly hard to find on Cuban market shelves - in a refrigerated box to a family in Havana.

In 2025, exports specifically directed to Cuba's private small and medium enterprises reached $173.6 million, according to an analysis published by Columbia University's School of Law.

"All the while Cuba's in crisis, there's this kind of quiet expansion both by the private sector and trade between Cuba and the United States," Henken said.

Smoked pork and strawberry-filled cookies

To test the system, USA TODAY ordered a package of chicken breast, chicken livers, smoked pork, palomilla steak, and strawberry-filled cookies to a family in Havana through online service Cuballama, an order totaling around $55 plus another $11 in taxes and shipping fees - or more than four times the average Cuban monthly salary.

From an app on an iPhone in Austin, Texas, the order pinged into an electronic cart and was paid for with a U.S. credit card. Just under 24 hours later, a white, covered electric tricycle hauling a cart full of bagged goods glided up to the building in Habana Vieja where Jorge Luis del Valle lives with his wife, Danneys, and 4-year-old daughter, Emma.

The delivery driver checked the contents and address through an order on WhatsApp on his smartphone, handed it to del Valle, then sped off to his next delivery. The food was wrapped in separate bags, in accurate amounts, still chilled from refrigeration and seemingly fresh, he said.

"All seems to be in good shape," del Valle said.

The delivery was a glimmer of good news in a living situation that deteriorates by the day. The family endures 20-hour blackouts, sometimes longer. Jorge Luis del Valle tries to sleep in a sweltering front living room, with the windows open, but is only able to steal a few hours at daybreak, he said, when the power returns and he's able to flick on the air conditioner.

Del Valle, a visual artist who ran a bed-and-breakfast until bookings dried up in February because of the energy crisis, said he's used the online delivery services a few times before. But for Cubans like himself, who don't have family in the United States, the service is so expensive as to be out of reach. He would rather have friends or family outside Cuba send him cash so he can buy food on the black market or in privately run shops.

In rural areas outside of Havana, where food is scarcer, the food delivery services make more sense, he said. They starkly highlight a system of haves and have nots.

"If you don't have family [in the U.S.], if you don't work in the tourism sector, if you don't have a job that pays in U.S. dollars, there is no way whatsoever for you to be able to afford this service," del Valle said.

Aldo Álvarez started Mercatoria, another online delivery service, in 2021 with three other Cuban partners. Unlike some of the other companies, Mercatoria is based in Cuba and run by Cubans. Since its launch, the company has diversified into logistics, fuel delivery, and transport, including hauling containers from Cuban ports to different provinces.

It still delivers goods to households, something that families in Cuba have come to rely on more and more as the situation in Cuba continues to spiral, Álvarez said. Food products are still flowing into Cuba from the United States, but increasingly people can't afford them - unless a family in the United States is sending packages, he said.

Integrating the Cuban and U.S. economies is key to the island's survival, Álvarez said.

"If you go out into the streets of Havana or the streets of Santiago de Cuba, there are products," he said. "You just can't buy what you need."

Besides providing much-needed food even as store shelves are empty, the services also provide jobs for Cubans and offer them a firsthand glimpse at the efficiency of the private sector, said John Kavulich, president of the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council, a trade group that has been dealing with Cuba since 1994.

"Hugely critical," he said. "These companies reinforce the failure of the Cuban government to provide for its people, notwithstanding the impact of U.S. policy, regulation, and statutes."

US sanctions target Cuba-linked companies

Some companies may soon be scaling back or closing altogether due to new U.S. sanctions that threaten their business models.

The U.S. embargo on Cuba prohibits selling to the Cuban government or government-related entities, though some sectors, such as agricultural commodities and medicines, are exceptions.

On June 15, online delivery platform Envioscuba.com announced it would be shutting down. "Due to reasons beyond our control, our platform can no longer provide services," said a message on its website, without elaborating.

Envioscuba uses warehouses controlled by GAESA, the conglomerate run by Cuba's military that was recently sanctioned, according to the Associated Press. On June 23, the Trump administration announced another round of sanctions aimed at GAESA-connected entities.

"The Cuban military-controlled conglomerate GAESA has persistently served as the main vector for regime elites to steal the island's few resources, diverting them for repression, anti-American subversion and spying instead of schools, power plants, and basic necessities for the Cuban people," Secretary of State Marco Rubio posted on X.

Hugo Cancio, a Miami-based Cuban-American entrepreneur, began the online delivery service Katapulk around the time of the COVID-19 pandemic. He opened warehouses across Cuba - allowed under the U.S. embargo if a business falls under one of the exceptions - and employed more than 300 Cubans to process and deliver the goods. White delivery vans with orange Katapulk logos splashed across each side delivered goods all over the island.

But a few years ago, he scaled back: He closed the warehouses and consolidated his work force to about a dozen in a single warehouse in Havana. Instead of shipping the goods themselves, private Cuban entrepreneurs use Katapulk to sell and deliver goods to customers.

The company's remodel allowed it to remove any connection to the Cuban government, he said.

Today, Katapulk delivers everything from ground beef to batteries and flashlights to about 2,000 homes - serving about 10,000 Cubans - each day.

"Everything we do has always been focused on helping the diaspora help their families in Cuba," Cancio said. "That's been our business model from the very beginning."

Helping Cubans, not the government

Even these seemingly innocuous apps aren't free of the contentious politics that surround every U.S.-Cuba venture.

Online delivery company Cubamax partnered with the Cuban state-owned freight company Aerovaradero to rapidly deliver medicine and perishable food, which is allowed under U.S. statute. It also signed a deal with the Central Bank of Cuba to process and distribute remittances after it had to sever ties with a different company that was owned by the Cuban military.

Keeping money out of the Cuban government's hands while helping the Cuban people is tricky, said Aymee Valdivia, an attorney at Holland & Knight who advises companies doing business in Cuba.

"Treasury [U.S. Department of the Treasury] understands perfectly well that the Cuban government will likely take a cut, and that's the way Cuba works," Valdivia said.

Even local politicians try to make hay when it comes to U.S.-Cuba relations. The Miami-Dade County tax collector, the first in 60 years to run for office instead of being appointed, revoked the tax licenses of 20 businesses he claims were illegally doing business with Cuba. At least one business sued for defamation and was granted an injunction.

Sanctions on remittance and food delivery apps could further cripple the island nation, María José Espinosa, executive director of the Center for Engagement and Advocacy in the Americas, said.

"Instead of hurting the government that would directly impact the Cuban people's basic necessities and survival," Espinosa said. "I wouldn't be surprised ifthe administration sees it as another pressure tool, but the consequences would be very dangerous."

Apps provide survival, connection

Meanwhile, families across Cuba rely on relatives in the United States using the food delivery apps to get by.

At the Deulofeu Louisville home, Carmen Deulofeu scrolled through lists of what her family had most recently sent to her sister's family, with many of the staples that would keep them going for another few weeks.

Deulofeu and her husband, a truck driver, emigrated from Cuba in 2004 after winning a spot in "el bombo," a lottery system that allowed Cubans to legally enter the United States.

They are now part of an estimated 60,000 people of Cuban descent living in Kentucky, most in Louisville, a city that's become a small but unlikely Cuban hub in part because of the lower cost of living. But their hearts remain with their relatives far across the Florida Straits.

Before hitting send, her son, Daynier Adan, added beer and some meat to the cart. His cousin's birthday in Cuba was coming up. They deserved a proper celebration.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Cuban 'Amazons' deliver 'absolutely essential' food during crisis

Reporting by Rick Jervis, Chris Kenning and Nick Penzenstadler, USA TODAY / USA TODAY

USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect

Copyright Reuters or USA Today Network via Reuters Connect

This story was originally published July 1, 2026 at 4:01 AM.