By Glenda Boza Ibarra (El Toque)
HAVANA TIMES – The opening of the new supermarket 3ra y 70, located under the Gran Muthu Habana Hotel, dominated the headlines of Cuba’s independent press in the first days of 2025.
Social media reactions, citizen reports, and press coverage highlight the widespread indignation among Cubans over the store’s policy: purchases can only be made with cash in foreign currency or international and certain domestic cards — such as Fincimex’s Classic or Bandec’s USD-denominated card.
Cuban-issued MLC cards (used to shop at state-run stores with dollar prices) are not accepted at the new supermarket, reaffirming that MLC lacks backing and that the government has failed to honor its promises to protect Cuban incomes and savings.
However, the supermarket’s location makes it a glaring symbol of inequality: it stands directly across from a similarly named MLC store whose shelves, once well-stocked, are now practically empty.
The Prince and the Pauper
Cubans have nicknamed the two supermarkets at 3ra y 70 “The Prince and the Pauper,” reflecting their stark differences.
While the new supermarket is filled with imported brands like Vima or Alteza and Cuban-made products like Ciego Montero, its MLC counterpart nearby features barren shelves and a scarce selection of basic goods.
Shoppers in the dollar store can choose from high-demand items like meat, milk, and cooking oil. Meanwhile, those reliant on the MLC store endure long waits for essentials that are rarely available. On a typical day, the MLC store offers “food” such as ketchup, mashed potatoes, or mustard.
Users have also reported significant differences in conditions: the dollar supermarket is well-lit, with ample cash registers and organization, while the MLC store is dimly lit, smells of spoiled food and defrosted freezers, and has limited functionality.
According to various reports, some of the products at the dollar supermarket appear to have been relocated from other MLC stores. Independent media images show labels on items like cheese, blood sausage, and beef sourced from inventories of other MLC establishments, such as the Flores store at 5ta y 3ra in Miramar.
This practice mirrors events in 2020 when the government pulled products from CUC stores to stock the then-new MLC shops. In the current context, it underscores the crisis forcing authorities to shuffle inventory and manipulate resources to prioritize foreign currency revenue over public needs.
Broken Promises
In July 2020, the Cuban government pledged to open 72 specialized stores selling “high-end products” exclusively in MLC. To shop there, citizens were required to deposit foreign currency onto newly issued MLC cards tied to the “banking dollar.”
The government promised these outlets would not sell essential items like oil, flour, milk, chicken, shampoo, soap, and detergent.
These stores were touted as a way to capture the foreign currency spent in international markets like Panama’s Colon Free Trade Zone while ensuring that state markets, funded by MLC revenues, would be restocked for the majority of the population.
Four and a half years later, Cubans have witnessed the expansion of dollarization on the island, exposing the low purchasing power of salaries in Cuban pesos, eroded by rampant inflation and the absence of an official currency exchange market to meet demand.
What was introduced in 2020 as a temporary and limited experiment has normalized, with stores and other services increasingly priced in foreign currency.
The government’s relentless pursuit of foreign currency revenue has taken a new turn, seemingly yielding results, as indicated by the crowds flocking to the newly inaugurated dollar store at 3ra y 70.
“Recent measures reveal their dollar hungry nature. [The government] squeezes, but they should understand there’s a limit to how much they can extract,” economist Mauricio de Miranda posted on social media. “Exploiting a society is exactly that — exploitation; it has no other name.”
First published in Spanish by El Toque and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.
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