Shopping in Cuban Pesos

Shopping in Cuban Pesos
December 1, 2014
Janis Hernandez

HAVANA TIMES — Hard-currency stores were part of a government strategy
launched a little over twenty-years ago to collect and control the
convertible currencies the population had. They appeared as limited
companies or department store chains subordinate to the Council of
State. According to official pronouncements, they are directly
supervised by the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR).

These stores (referred to as "shoppings" in Cuba), were once the sale
points where thousands of Cuban families were able to obtain some
trinkets in exchange for gold and silver jewelry, coins and other
heirlooms. Through this "initiative", the government took possession of
nearly all the gold of many naïve individuals who, swept up by the
enthusiasm, had their heirlooms valued.

There were even those who traded in their heirlooms as though it were
their duty to do so. Only a few (very, very few) were able to get a car
or something of some value, and one can imagine the amount of gold and
silver they had to trade for these. It was the revolutionary version of
trading gold for mirrors.

A short time later, these stores became chains operated by different
corporations, filling even the most recondite corners of the island –
CIMEX, TRASVAL, TRDs, Tiendas Panamericanas, in short, the stores we're
all familiar with.

The supposed deals offered by these establishments, as is always the
case in Cuba, were all talk. Let's have a look:

These stores are considered strategic business units. Their aim is to
offer quality services and provide customers with the products they need
at sale points. Their mission was to become quality and competitive
neighborhood stores across Cuba, offering products and services that
satisfy customer expectations, and to secure hard currency revenues that
would make them profitable and contribute to the Cuban State. They were
supposed to become examples in terms of quality and competitiveness,
satisfy customers, and employ motivated and devoted workers that would
ensure innovation.

All of this was nothing but hot air. Services were deficient, essential
products were scarce, the stores almost always ran out of bags for
groceries, the AC was regularly shut down at establishments – to say
nothing of "lack" of spare change, made up for with candy or gum.

Now, we have the latest version of these stores: stores that sell
products in Cuba's two currencies or Cuban pesos (CUP) stores. As part
of the monetary unification process and the need to collect the
convertible pesos in circulation, these stores are now selling products
in CUC and CUP.

These sale points look like battlefields, where desperate people hoard
food items (which never meet true demand). Services are worse and slower
now because clerks go nuts having to go back in forth from the two
currencies and count what's in the register every what seems to be 15
minutes. Forget about bags and a working AC.

Prices are an insult, particularly when we see the price of an item in
CUC and its equivalent in CUP below, and find out a fan costs more money
than what a professional makes in a month, or a kilogram of tripe more
than an old person's pension. Shopping in Cuban pesos can be a shocking
experience indeed.

Source: Shopping in Cuban Pesos - Havana Times.org -
<http://www.havanatimes.org/?p=107681>