Cuba and the Slow Agony of the State’s Dollar Stores
Import difficulties and power outages are hitting the stores created by the regime to capture foreign currency.
By Natalia Lopez Moya (14ymedio)
HAVANA TIMES – Just a year and a half ago, the doors of the 3rd and 70th Street market, located on the ground floor of the Grand Muthu Habana hotel, opened with an ambitious promise: to capture fresh foreign currency to rescue Cuba’s battered economy and guarantee the supply of basic products. Images of its fully stocked shelves, refrigerators packed with imported meats, and brightly lit aisles contrasted sharply with the usual landscape of scarcity that dominated the Island.
Today, that picture seems like a distant memory.
The government’s dollar stores, which authorities presented as a temporary solution to raise hard currency and sustain other strategic sectors, are experiencing their worst moment since their creation. Chronic shortages, US sanctions against the military conglomerate GAESA, the suspension of Visa and Mastercard use, and constant blackouts have turned these establishments into dark, half-empty stores.
The same scene repeats itself across Havana: shelves displaying a single product over and over again, refrigeration equipment switched off, idle workers, and customers who enter hopeful but leave empty-handed.
At the La Puntilla shopping mall, in Miramar, the deterioration is evident from the entrance. Large areas of the building remain closed to the public, the air conditioning barely functions, and the lighting operates at half power to save electricity. The butcher section looks deserted, and the shelves for canned goods and grains are filled to less than 10% of their capacity.
This Monday, only a handful of customers wandered silently through the supermarket.
“I came looking for powdered milk, hot dogs, or a can of sardines, but they don’t have any of that,” lamented a neighborhood resident as she put away her purse before leaving. “I’ve never seen it this dead before. They might as well shut it down.”
The situation is not much different at Carlos III Plaza in Central Havana. The supermarket that once occupied the ground floor has been reduced to a small store accessible from the rear of the shopping center and another shop on the first floor. Both spaces show the same symptom: a lack of merchandise.
“We haven’t received any meat products for several days,” an employee explained to those approaching the makeshift butcher section, where a couple of empty refrigerators stand as reminders of the store’s decline. In the non-refrigerated goods area, only detergents, a few canned products, and other low-demand items remain.
“What’s left is what sells the least,” the worker admitted.
At La Mariposa, in Nuevo Vedado, the scene is even more bleak. Under the dimness caused by a blackout, several employees fan themselves beside empty refrigerators while waiting for the power to return. The silence is broken only by the occasional bewildered customer entering to ask whether they have chicken or have received a shipment of hot dogs.
The answer, invariably, is “no.”
Power outages have accelerated the deterioration of markets that never managed to establish a stable supply system. The situation is especially critical at the La Isla de Cuba supermarket, one of the largest dollarized stores in the capital, which spends much of its time closed due to lack of electricity.
When it does manage to open, the outlook is no better: thawed meats, the smell of spoilage, and shelves where the same product is stocked horizontally to disguise the gaps left by scarcity.
Paradoxically, the market at 3rd and 70th remains the best-stocked in the city and continues to symbolize dollarization. But even there, the selection bears little resemblance to that of any supermarket in Latin America, where customers can also pay in the national currency.
This Monday, the butcher section displayed hot dogs, frozen chicken leg quarters, some low-quality processed meats, and pieces of pork. In the fruit section, only imported apples remained, some visibly bruised. The rest of the shelves repeated the same monotonous combination of cookies, bottled water, canned vegetables, and long-shelf-life products.
“I come here because it’s the only place where you can still find some meat,” says Raydel, a Cuban resident of Miami who frequently visits the Island to see his mother. “Today we went through several stores looking for chicken breast and couldn’t find any. We also haven’t been able to find butter, even though I have dollars in my pocket.”
His testimony summarizes a shift that is becoming increasingly evident: having foreign currency no longer guarantees access to basic goods.
In an economy that is becoming ever more dollarized, the US dollar circulates at an extremely high price—680 pesos this Wednesday—but the available products are extremely limited in both variety and quality.
What began as an effort to capture foreign currency and support state coffers has ended up reproducing the same problem that plagues state-run stores operating in Cuban pesos: endless searches, empty shelves, and a sense of exhaustion that extends from consumers to the workers themselves.
Outside these markets, customers no longer discuss what they plan to buy. The question heard again and again is much simpler:
“Is there anything left?”
First published in Spanish by 14ymedio and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.
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