14ymedio, Mercedes García, Sancti Spíritus | 30 December 2023 — Edith has been “hunting” for a few pounds of malanga and two pork shanks for weeks. This end of the year, her house in the Los Olivos neighborhood, in Sancti Spíritus, has become a base of operations. The budget: 100 dollars that her brother sent her months ago from the United States. Her objective: to change the currency with the utmost discretion and outside her neighborhood, where the military and cadres of the provincial government are not in short supply.
On the other side of the city, in the humble neighborhood of Jesús María, Carlos has been collecting pesos all year to buy an electric pressure cooker. Before acquiring the precious artifact, he has to get dollars, go to the bank and witness their transformation – painful after “letting go of the green” – into freely convertible currency (MLC), a currency invented by the Cuban regime.
Thanks to social networks, Edith finds in Carlos the perfect candidate for her transaction. They meet at her house. With some embarrassment, Carlos deposits a worn black briefcase on the sofa that Edith examines with suspicion. He ope