Cubans Wait to Hear News on Bread and Butter Issues

[naaman fletcher]

Cuba has a highly unpopular dual currency system. There is the non-convertible Cuban peso and the Cuban Convertible Currency or CUC, which came into existence in 1994. The CUC is, theoretically at least, backed by hard currency. Foreign visitors change their EUROS or U.S. dollars into CUC to pay their hotel and restaurants. Cubans buy CUC at a highly unfavorable exchange rate with the regular Cuban pesos that they receive as wages. And the only reason they do so is because they have to.

"Take toiletries, basic products like that have to be bought in shops that charge CUCs and as far as I know workers here earn Cuban pesos," points out Luis Diaz, 26, a computer specialist.

Bath soap, toothpaste, cooking oil, and butter are just some of the products Cubans can only obtain in CUCs.
Nearly everyone we spoke with raised the same issue.

"There is one measure that the entire world is waiting for, that is the elimination of the dual currency...and it's a measure that our Government and our economists must analyze sooner or later," echoed Ruben Pupo, 47, a security guard.

"We have had many problems with agriculture of late, with sugar cane, root vegetables and there is not much to see in the markets for reasons that nearly everybody knows, a lack of organization, deficiencies in farming and that has to improve and I think that some measure to fix this situation should emerge on July 26th, but not just words or something that remains on paper, we need action."

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503543_162-20011586-503543.html

[Billy Burnett]

1. Were they talking to "dissidents" on the payroll?

Did you notice this little snip from the article? {Bolding of article text added by me.}

They did say that the surviving currency would be the Cuban peso. Evidence of this appears in the opening of some restaurants, cafeterias and stores across the country selling products normally priced in CUCs for Cuban pesos but at elevated cost.

The anti Castro dual currency articles are so convoluted with hide-and-highlight talking points it renders them meaningless. Why would ordinary Cubans want things to cost more? Only the Cubans getting money from Miami, and "dissidents" living on the largess of US taxpayers could afford the change mentioned. Awful to see the US contributing to renewing the economic class struggles that the Revolution sought to end (and pretty much did).

I know you agree ... let's put the US's extraterritorial sanctions and the US travel ban out to pasture forever.