Havana Cuba. – It was enough with a simple announcement of the calls “Measures of the Biden Government in support of the Cuban people”in mid-May, so that just a few minutes later the value of the dollar and other currencies in the informal market began to decline.
From 115 Cuban pesos (CUP) for each USD, in less than a week the US currency was quoted above 98 CUP. Even those sellers who panicked when they saw the rapid drop, accepted much less than 90 pesos, thinking that the exchange would stabilize close to 60 CUP in less than a month, when the flights from Miami began to normalize as they were before. of the pandemic.
But a few days have passed, currency prices have risen again and, as things are going in the Cuban economy and finances, so precarious and with no signs of recovery in the short or medium term, there are no shortage of omens that speak of a possible escalation of the dollar “to infinity and beyond”.
Following the publications of sellers and buyers on social networks, as well as listening to the comments on the street about the issue, everything indicates that the sharp decline was pure speculation since neither the measures would be effective immediately nor the mass exodus gave still showing signs of stopping or peaking; on the contrary, it has become the worst migration crisis during so many decades of dictatorship.
However, a good part of the messages on social networks, in the main buying and selling groups, took for granted that the exodus was beginning to diminish as well as that the economic situation would begin to improve, something that although the less naive knew that it would never happen , in a certain way it worked as that “hopeful message” that the regime needed to gain time, even if it was only a few weeks, to ease internal tensions.
For a few days, very few, some anxious for a solution to the current economic debacle experienced in Cuba the feeling that a light was turning on in its dark horizons and, without a doubt, the so-called “cyberclarias”, those that the dictatorship ridiculously named as “cyber fighters”, they probably took the opportunity to reinforce in cyberspace that idea of ”improvement” without foundation in reality.
In this sense, several administrators of some of these private buying and selling groups have confirmed to CubaNet that in those days the requests to join increased considerably, coming mostly from fake profiles, recently created, which in many cases coincided with very active profiles in other public groups where they dedicated themselves not only to flooding social networks with messages about the end of the exodus, the imminent fall of the dollar below 60 Cuban pesos and the recovery of tourism, but to insist on the idea that currency sellers were “abusers”, “maintained from outside”, “parasites of society ”, in addition to the main cause of the high prices of products in the market.
“(They were) the same messages repeated in all the groups,” says Iván, administrator of a currency sales group on Facebook. “Different profiles, with false photos or without photos, repeating the same thing. Creating the illusion that things were going to improve, that the dollar would drop to less than 50 pesos. People said that they were the same resellers trying to buy cheap and then resell but no, that didn’t make sense. They were the same profiles that one later saw on other pages attacking anyone who spoke ill of the government. At the moment they turned to the dollar. I bet whatever it is that this was ordered to do, ”says the interviewee.
But while the dollar fell rapidly for a few days, prices on the black market and in the network of state stores rose as much or more than in the previous days. Even in stores that only sell in Freely Convertible Currency (MLC), several products raised the price between 20 and 40 percent (becoming more noticeable with home appliances), probably seeking to capture those increases as a result of speculation.
In fact, there were those who ran to change the dollars for MLC, because for this the value in the informal market remained more stable, although in reality the MLC is used for nothing more than buying or acquiring certain services in those state establishments that it rejects so much. a majority of the population without access to remittances from abroad.
Coincidence or malicious intent, the truth is that prices in MLC stores rose immediately after the announcement of the measures of the current US president. For many in Cuba, a large part of the apparently spontaneous campaign inside the island against the informal exchange rate for the dollar that came after May 16 could have been an intimidation strategy designed by the Cuban regime to stimulate foreign exchange earnings or at least resulted in a collateral (albeit conscious) benefit of speculation.
“I think they took advantage of the announcement to get the ball rolling,” says a young man who sells foreign currency on the informal market. “People got scared and many who had the dollars saved took them out and converted them into MLC or euros. Most of us sellers did that fearing to lose more. The MLC had also started to decline but much less. Now, what strikes me is that within two or three weeks the prices started to go up in the MLC stores.”
For his part, another currency seller also suspects that many of the publications that led to the momentary fall of the dollar, rather than a strategy to increase MLC’s income, sought to gain time by sowing false hopes about a prompt “recovery of the economy.” ”, once flights from Miami are normalized.
“People who had never seen selling or buying dollars at the moment appeared in the groups saying all those stupid things, even saying that they were buying but then one called them and nothing. It was to create expectations, sow the idea that everything was beginning to improve and thus buy time (…). These guys (the regime) are drowning, desperate (…); Nor do I deny that the little game of fear has benefited them. I think above all that a few days before the Economy Minister appeared talking about adjusting the official exchange rate above 50 pesos, as well as the future sale of MLC selectively. On the other hand, people ran out to exchange dollars for MLC, but I don’t think that was the main objective. Well, they (the regime) take advantage of everything”, says this seller.
Beyond the fact that the campaign to lower the price of the dollar on the street was orchestrated by the Communist Party itself with purposes that only they know, the truth is that the enthusiasm for the fall was short-lived and currently the USD climbed to reach again the 115 Cuban pesos per unit; and there are those who predict that, if the current mass exodus continues, by the end of the year it could have exceeded 150 CUP in the informal market, even if flights from the United States to Cuba increase, or if the arrival of tourists continues to grow.
On the other hand, on the street, people’s opinions are diverse about what will have to happen so that the prices of foreign currencies go down again.
“We will have to wait for all those people who are leaving now to be able to return or send money and I think that will not happen. The families are leaving completely,” says another interviewee on condition of anonymity.
“This is never going to get fixed. These shameless discovered how to get money from people and that the endurance of the Cuban is infinite. We are lost”, comments another person.
“Of course it will go down and it will be soon. The country will be left empty and neither the dollar nor the euro nor even the national currency will be of any use. This is direct to the primitive community”, says a young university student, who also affirms that everyone in his Faculty plans to leave the country once they finish their studies.
“In my neighborhood there is not a house where no one has left, or where everyone is thinking about how to make money to leave. In the Faculty even the abnormal of the FEU and the Youth (UJC)… everyone is ready to leave. Before they used to say ‘He who doesn’t jump is a Yankee’; now the thing is ‘Whoever doesn’t jump for the Yanqui is screwed’”.
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