Will November 1 be D-Day in Cuba?

By Aurelio Pedroso (Progreso Semanal)

HAVANA TIMES – When speaking to a crowd, one should be as careful or more careful than when defusing a land mine.

Marino Murillo is the maximum person in charge of the Communist Party for the implementation of the economic reforms. On a recent Round Table on Cuban TV, he gave as an example the case of a “ponchero” tire repairman.  It didn’t take 48 hours for a private worker in this service to raise the price five times for blowing air into a wheel.

If there’s something in excess today in Cuba, it’s precisely the pretexts or arguments to raise prices in private activity. Not to mention the always harmful, but last resort illicit market. First comes the blockade being hardened, and COVID-19, which has prevented the arrival of tourism and family visits. Both elements, plus others that could be added, have contributed to the current situation.

Then there are the lines, and not precisely those to acquire chicken or other means of survival. Almost endless lines also exist at offices for paperwork with the high ingredient of exhaustion and all kinds of annoyances.

This occurs in the tax offices and municipal delegations of the Ministry of Labor and Social Security. The municipality of Playa is a heartbreaking example.

In this situation, the disappearance of the convertible peso or CUC is supposedly coming.

Talk of salary and price increases

A respected signal is one that has started to circulate in the last 48 hours. It’s none other than the rumor that some people already received bank notification of the increase in pensions and retirements.

The authorities said the beginning of the disappearance of the CUC will occur on the first day of a certain month. If that’s the case, then it must be assumed that this November 1 could be D-Day.

Live to see. Times of high tension these days. So much so that foresight even manages to cross the national border and land in the White House.

Read more by Aurelio Pedroso here.