Cuba resurrects dollar-only stores, a symbol of inequality

In a uncommon country of plentifulness successful Cuba, the shelves are afloat astatine a caller state-owned dollar-only supermarket successful Havana. Photo: YAMIL LAGE / AFP
Source: AFP

In communist Cuba, immoderate customers are much adjacent than others, arsenic a 40-year-old mathematics teacher who was retired buying precocious successful Havana with his lad discovered.

The brace passed a spanking caller store situated connected the crushed level of a luxury edifice successful the upmarket Miramar neighborhood.

But "we had hardly enactment a ft wrong erstwhile they told maine it (payment) was successful dollars," Michael, the teacher, who declined to springiness his surname, told AFP.

"Let's go, this isn't for us," helium told his son, making a beeline for the door.

The state-owned supermarket, which opened successful January, is the archetypal of respective dollar-denominated stores acceptable to unfastened crossed the island, arsenic portion of a bid to boost the island's battered economy.

Prime Minister Manuel Marrero said the determination was a "necessary process" for the authorities to get its hands connected immoderate of the dollars circulating "illegally" connected the achromatic market.

The Caribbean federation of 9.7 cardinal is experiencing its worst economical situation successful 30 years, marked by shortages of nutrient and fuel, recurring blackouts and a captious shortage of hard currency.

Remittances from Cuban migrants are the island's second-biggest root of precious dollars, aft the payments it receives from loaning tens of thousands of doctors to astir 60 countries, including Venezuela and Brazil.

But galore Cubans person nary entree to greenbacks. That leaves the state divided betwixt the haves, who can acquisition plentiful goods successful dollar-payment stores, and the have-nots similar Michael, who is paid successful Cuban pesos -- which helium past converts into MLC, a virtual currency introduced successful 2019 that has mislaid overmuch of its value.

'The prince and the pauper'

The shelves are often bare successful Cuban government-run market stores that judge lone payments successful MLC, a virtual currency introduced successful 2019 that has mislaid overmuch of its value. Photo: YAMIL LAGE / AFP
Source: AFP

As Michael was leaving the dollar-denominated store, customers were emerging with trolleys piled precocious with goods -- a uncommon show of plentifulness successful Cuba, wherever store shelves are often empty.

The shortages, coupled with paltry wages (the mean monthly wage is astir 5,000 pesos, oregon $42), mean that radical tin seldom negociate to capable their carts.

"Here we've ever recovered what we're looking for," said Enzo Puebla, a 24-year-old engineer. He receives dollars from relatives overseas, utilizing them to bargain eggs, cooking lipid and nutrient -- goods seldom stocked successful the MLC-payment store crossed the street.

Such is the opposition betwixt the 2 stores that Cubans person nicknamed them "the prince and the pauper."

"The main occupation of dollarization is that it's partial," Cuban economist Mauricio de Miranda told AFP, noting that portion user goods whitethorn beryllium disposable successful dollars, salaries are not.

"This people leads to the exclusion of radical who person nary mode of obtaining dollars," Miranda, a researcher astatine Javierana University successful the Colombian metropolis of Cali, said.

When dollars meant jailhouse

Cuba has a long, turbulent narration with the dollar.

After the nationalist gyration that brought Fidel Castro to powerfulness successful 1959, the dollar was strictly banned.

Being successful possession of a azygous greenback could onshore a idiosyncratic successful situation for a year.

It took the illness of the Soviet Union, Cuba's main state and fiscal backer, to bring a alteration of heart.

In 1993, Castro yet decriminalized possession of dollars, and the archetypal stores accepting greenbacks were opened.

But a decennary later, amid a enactment with the United States, the dollar was scrapped arsenic ineligible tender.

Drop successful tourism

Eggs, nutrient and cooking lipid are often absent from the shelves successful supermarkets that lone judge MLC payments. Photo: YAMIL LAGE / AFP
Source: AFP

Cuba blames its existent economical woes connected a tightening, during Donald Trump's archetypal presidency, of the six-decade-long US commercialized embargo.

But it is besides reeling from a diminution successful tourists, who are enactment disconnected by the wide shortages and blackouts, and a failed monetary betterment successful 2021 that drove up the terms of dollars connected the achromatic market.

The authorities has billed its partial dollarization strategy arsenic a impermanent measurement aimed astatine reviving the system -- and says its eventual extremity is to wean Cubans disconnected the US currency altogether.

For Tamarys Bahamonde, a Cuban economist astatine the American University successful Washington, it's an illusory goal.

Cuba, she argued, is simply a "nearly textbook lawsuit of the difficulties you look erstwhile you effort to de-dollarize an economy."

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Source: AFP