Cuba’s Biggest Marketplace Readies for US Dollar Sales
The largest and oldest market in Havana is closed and will no longer sell in the magnetic MLC currency.
By Natalia Lopez Moya (14ymedio)
HAVANA TIMES – A convergence of municipalities, a crossroads of avenues, Cuatro Caminos is more than the colossal building that bears its name. It’s also the name given to an area where commerce has traditionally been the lifeblood and livelihood of its residents. Now, everyone passing by notices that the plaza that gave life to the neighborhood has closed. “When it reopens, it’ll be in dollars,” a security employee tells 14ymedio.
With almost all entrances blocked off with metal doors, the commercial plaza is now reduced to a half-functioning upstairs shop selling household goods. The rest, including the supermarket, has entered the fast lane toward inevitable dollarization, a path already taken by several of Havana’s most important stores and shopping ceters. The magnetic MLC currency in which its goods were sold since 2021 was not enough to keep its vast halls stocked.
The writing was on the wall. A month ago, a butcher shop run by the Mexican company Richmeat stepped “into the dollar zone,” thanks to an agreement signed with the military conglomerate GAESA’s Cimex Corporation to manage a whole commercial complex under the name La Favorita, after some of the brand’s products.
In recent years, it was alarming to wander through the shops located in the imposing building that occupies the entire block and see the empty spaces, the deserted shelves, and the unlit lights. The breath of the fula (USD) to come emanated from what was once the main market in the Cuban capital. With its two horns of plenty carved into the facade, the prosperous cornucopia was not reflected in its increasingly undersupplied interior. A commercial anemia that ended up affecting the entire area.
“We live off reselling and hustling around here,” admits a nearby cigarette lighter repairman, who—while refilling gas in a lighter or replacing the flint to spark it again—also hawks tiny tubes of superglue, packets of powdered soft drink mix, and “razors you just can’t do without.” When the market’s supply dried up, “people stopped coming from other neighborhoods looking for hardware supplies, boxes of chicken, or paint for their houses,” he tells this paper. “Fewer customers means less business.”
The commercial downturn hit everyone. The elderly man who used to take advantage of red lights to clean the windshields of cars arriving to buy bathtubs, the santera who read tarot cards on the opposite sidewalk and saw more clients whenever the butcher shop was well stocked, and the young man with a disability who set up a table with used plumbing parts for people looking for a faucet or a drainpipe that was too expensive in the store. As word spread that the mall was “wiped out,” everyone’s income began to dry up too.
Now, the hope is that the dollar will breathe new life into the area. “The next battle of Cuatro Caminos will be among people who have dollars,” quips the lighter repairman. But it’s hard to believe that, as in November 2019, a frenzied crowd will once again break down the doors, race up the stairs, shake the shelves, and grab the most coveted merchandise. There just aren’t that many Cubans with dollars anymore in their pockets.
First published in Spanish by 14ymedio and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.