Pablo, a Mexican businessman invited to the Habano Festival in Cuba, he paid dearly for the hazing of traveling to the Island for the first time. Ready for a week of luxuries, Creole food and the best tobacco in the world, he armed his wallet with more than 2,000 dollars and got on the plane. When she arrived in Havana she looked for the exchange office at the airport, she handed over all her bills and they returned wads and wads of pesos. Her pocket still hurts from the blow.
“To take everything with me, I needed a bag,” he tells 14ymedio, evoking his Cuban “adventure” with agony. Pablo traveled to the Island with three friends and stayed in a hostel that, luckily, he had reserved from Mexico.
Hungry, they went in search of one of the paladares in Old Havana and found that the mismatch between the “mountain of tickets” they had been given at the air terminal and the restaurant prices was scary. “When asking for the bill and taking out a bundle of money,” he recounts, “the waiter raised his eyebrows and came back with a counting machine.”
“When asking for the bill and taking out a packet of money,” he recounts, “the waiter raised his eyebrows and came back with a counting machine.”
Ticket counting machines have become an increasingly popular tool in Cuba to the surprise of tourists. “The offers are not lacking,” the owner of the hostel told them when she returned.
The increase in prices, together with the low value of the Cuban peso and the low circulation of high-denomination bills have contributed to the popularity of these machines, which are offered in online purchase and sale advertisements on the Island.
“Machine for counting $260 bills, with ultraviolet rays and counterfeit money detector,” promises an ad with a futuristic tone. “New machine, in its box, you premiere it”, guarantees another, who accompanies the offer with a video of the brand new equipment.
The face of Calixto García or Carlos Manuel de Céspedes runs rapidly through the counting mechanism, the wheels emit a clean, efficient noise, and a number appears on the screen. “It never fails,” says one of the vendors.
Some, more skilled, do not set the price but look for the most attractive angles to photograph the device. The counter in its box, with its shiny “teeth” and new buttons, costs more than a used one, stolen or recycled from a bank. Each operation in Cuba requires a large amount of cash, another consequence of the scarce use of credit cards and other types of virtual payments on the island. “I buy eight of the big machines, I pay up to $200 for each one, I don’t more”, exposes a wealthy self-employed person.
Inflation has destroyed the illusion of tourists who, like Pablo, expect to experience luxury tourism with a modest amount of money and now must adapt their trip to a model low cost. The Mexican and his friends were able to buy very few cigars at the Habano Festival, which he already attended in disgust and in a bad mood.
. The Mexican and his friends were able to buy very few cigars at the Habano Festival, to which he already attended in disgust and in a bad mood
“The atmosphere seemed rarefied to me,” he says, remembering how the leaders, in suits and guayaberas, strutted through the Convention Center with thick cigars in their mouths and accompanied by their escort.
“The closing night was the worst, because President Díaz-Canel and many other rulers attended, all well dressed,” he says. The last straw was the scandalous humidor auction –the cedar boxes to store the cigars–, one of them signed by the president, which cost the buyer no less than 4.2 million dollars. “Or so they say,” doubts Pablo, who suspects that there was something strange in that transaction and that the “Chinese or Russian millionaire” who acquired the piece of furniture doesn’t even exist. “It has to be another trap,” he settles, chastened by the fraud at the airport.
He returned to Mexico as a lost soul and unable to get out of his head the annoying noise of the counting machines “in each restaurant.” “My friends and I have decided to change the cigars we buy and look for others that are not Cuban,” he says, “It’s going to be hard, but what we saw there left us disgusted. As the song says: I’m not coming back.”
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