14ymedio, Natalia López Moya, Havana, 13 October 2023 — “I now pronounce you husband and wife,” was repeated several times a day between those walls. The former Legal Consultancy of Nuevo Vedado in Havana, which welcomed so many marriages between Cubans and foreigners, is now a business immersed in the separation of goods for the privileged foreigners and the National beggars. On the same property there is a market in pesos and another, newly opened, in freely convertible currency. From a distance the building is obvious. Dark wooden blinds cover its facade and alternate with geometric stained glass windows that are not only the most beautiful thing on that block but for several blocks around. The house, which once belonged to a prosperous resident of the area, has been in the hands of the State for decades, and a few years ago it ceased to be used for marriages and the legalization of documents to become a store.
An exterior ramp and staircase lead to very different worlds. The one that goes upwards leads to a room where the so-called “modules” are sold in Cuban pesos, which the nearby neighbors can acquire once a month after being aware, for days, of what is announced in the shop window that corresponds to their family’s ration. The staircase leads to the semi-basement, where they only accept foreign currency.
Recently opened, the new freely convertible currency (MLC) store is a small room with only one counter. “It’s not self-service; ask for what you want and I’ll get it,” the employee clarified to a customer who wanted to look closely at a can of tomato sauce located on the shelf behind the woman’s back. Displayed on four shelves were mayonnaise, soy sauce, pasta, cookies, vegetables and toilet paper.
“The offers are quite poor,” complained an old woman who had been looking for chicken sausages. “We don’t have any butcher or frozen food because there is no fridge to store those products,” the employee responded. An exhibition refrigerator contained only beer: the foreign Corona and the national Parranda. A few small packets of instant soda completed the market’s limited catalog.
Outside, some customers who did not know that sales were in foreign currency crowded to enter. The guard, realizing the confusion, warned that the place “is in MLC.” This caused a stampede of long faces. “I thought they weren’t going to continue opening stores of this type if the ones that
