A video recorded on Friday in Marianao captures a dense crowd gathered outside a bank, desperately attempting to withdraw cash. This scene serves as yet another indication of the monetary "reordering" failure in Cuba and the severe cash shortages at ATMs.
Shared on Facebook by José Díaz Silva, the silent footage depicts a line so packed it spills onto the street in front of a bank in this Havana district on Friday, November 21. The video shows over a hundred individuals clumped together, waiting to access their own money—a sight that has become commonplace across the nation, contradicting the official narrative of an "orderly" progression towards increased banking.
While the government touts this as a "necessary transformation" of the financial system, many Cubans experience it as an obstacle course. They face banks devoid of cash, malfunctioning or empty ATMs, and withdrawal limits that fluctuate daily.
This enforced transition to banking coincides with uncontrolled inflation and a chronic shortage of cash, rendering bank accounts nearly useless for those unable to convert their funds into bills necessary for daily survival.
Endless Lines and Frustrated Customers
The scene at Marianao reflects ongoing complaints of interminable lines and customers spending hours without success, unable to withdraw even a fraction of their balance because branches are enforcing ever-lower caps or claiming "no cash available at the counter."
In a context of depreciated wages and soaring prices, the inability to access one's own money exacerbates social discontent and fuels the perception of a banking system seen as opaque, inefficient, and more attentive to the state's needs than to the citizens'.
The Impact of Cuba's De Facto Dollarization
Meanwhile, the country experiences a de facto dollarization, forcing Cubans toward foreign currencies as stores operating in freely convertible currency dominate the availability of basic goods, penalizing those who earn solely in pesos.
The combination of inflation, cash scarcity, and official preference for foreign currencies has sparked a thriving informal currency market, where the Cuban peso plummets far more rapidly than the official exchange rate set by the Central Bank.
The Monetary "Reordering" Setback
The ill-fated monetary "reordering," initially proposed as a major reform to regulate prices, wages, and exchange rates, has only intensified imbalances. Prices have surged far beyond income levels, widening the gap between those who access dollars and those reliant solely on state salaries.
Four years later, the country is caught in an inflationary spiral, with a financial system lacking adequate liquidity and banks, as evidenced by the Marianao video, unable to even assure clients of normal cash withdrawals.
Remittances and Bureaucratic Hurdles
The crisis impacts not only ordinary Cubans but also traps family remittances in a bureaucratic maze and liquidity shortfall, with beneficiaries waiting weeks or months for transfers meant to arrive within days.
As the regime attempts to blame informal money transfer networks and private operators for foreign currency flight, the reality is many users prefer these channels precisely because they distrust a state banking system that doesn't always deliver what it receives.
Concurrently, authorities have launched a political and media offensive against the independent outlet El Toque, accusing it of "sabotaging" the Cuban economy by publishing the informal market exchange rate.
However, scenes like the Marianao bank demonstrate that the root of the financial chaos lies not in a website but in an economic model incapable of ensuring monetary stability, banking confidence, or basic cash access.
While official media focus their attacks on critical platforms and informal exchange networks, Cubans' daily lives continue to be marked by pre-dawn lines, arbitrary withdrawal limits, and the sense of living in a country where even withdrawing money from the bank is uncertain.
The Marianao video thus adds to a growing list of evidence that the banking process, as implemented in Cuba, does not modernize the economy but exposes it as a system teetering on the brink of collapse, propped up by bills that are almost never where they're needed.
Understanding Cuba's Financial Crisis
What is causing the cash shortage in Cuba?
The cash shortage in Cuba is primarily due to the failure of the government's monetary "reordering" policy, which has led to banks running out of cash, malfunctioning ATMs, and changing withdrawal limits.
How are Cubans coping with the cash crisis?
Cubans are struggling to cope with the cash crisis by waiting in long lines at banks, relying on informal currency markets, and facing challenges in accessing basic goods due to a de facto dollarization.