Cuba: Keeping Them Poor

At 4 o’clock one sultry morning, Havana radios started droning out the latest directive from Cuba’s Communist government. The nation’s currency was being changed. During the next two days, Cubans must hand over their old pesos—all of them. In exchange, they would get a maximum of 200 new-style pesos in cash, with the rest “credited” to their names in a government-controlled “bank account,” from which from then on they might draw 1,000 pesos after a week and no more than 100 pesos per month. All old pesos were declared worthless.

Fidel Castro explained that it was necessary to “fortify our money” and deal “an annihilating blow to the counterrevolution.” The move did make it more difficult for an underground to find funds to operate, but the real blow was to Cuba’s people. Having mangled Cuba’s economy to the point where the peso, once worth $1, became worth only 18¢, Castro now ensured his people’s poverty by taking over their cash savings in one swoop.

In Miami the exiles shrugged. “Yesterday I was well off,” said one. “Today I have nothing.” In Cuba some people burned their money, and others spent it. Housewives packed the meager stores; Havana’s tomblike luxury restaurants sprang suddenly to life. One man sat at a bar calmly lighting cigars with 20-peso bills: a shop owner stood on the sidewalk passing out money and crying: “The end of the world has come.”

As Cubans queued up at 3,000 exchange centers, a Havana fruit vendor handed over 12,000 pesos, and beggars showed up with what they had. The thin sheaves of new bills they received were made in Czechoslovakia, pictured Fidel in heroic stance. Then the government announced one more cruel surprise: any cash that had been turned in exceeding 10,000 pesos would be “confiscated.” The vast majority of Cubans could now be considered a true proletariat working for what the government decides to pay as wages. Said one Cuban: “It is a typical Communist technique. They keep them poor and keep them working.”