Cuban Currency: The Dollar and "Special Period" Fiction

The Cuban Convertible Peso, known as CUC, is the international money, the currency conceived by Fidel´s regime to contain the devaluation of the nacional currency. There are also currency exchange offices in almost every town you go to. With two currencies coexisting in the country and a lot of people receiving money from family members abroad, exchanging is a part of Cuban´s lives. (Read more: I´ve never seen a currency exchange house in Brazil selling Cuban money. Money – Cuba has two currencies: the Cuban Peso and the Cuban Convertible Peso (CUC). The first is the currency used by the local population, and has a really low value. If you are going to stay in a Casa Particular (the private homes where Cubans rent rooms) and they say there’s only a baño cubano (or Cuban bath) just know that there will be no running water. The bathrooms there may not have running water, toilet paper or toilet seats, but there’s always someone taking care of it and expecting that you leave a tip for their services (sometimes that even gets you a little piece of paper to dry your hands). Now, if you want to travel on a shoestring, stay in private houses and use the almendrón (the Cuban colective taxi), than you can calculate 50 CUC per day, including meals and lodging. For the average Cuban, who earns around 25 Euros a month, the beverage costs a real fortune (and yes, you can find Coke everywhere in the island). One Euro is worth around 25 Cuban Pesos. 50 CUC coins or Cuban Pesos bills at hand.

  A ticket costs two pesos in national currency (US 10 cents). Left to choose between the ease of watching a movie at home, or the battle with public transport to get to the movie theater and later another battle with public transport to go home again, the choice is clear. There have also been times when a movie is presented on television at the same time that it reaches the movie theaters, or even before. Over the course of a year, movie theaters like the Charles Chaplin offer cycles and samples of international films, but even so, the theaters are rarely full again to capacity. In the opinion of a Swiss friend, it’s not all that cheap though, if you consider it in relation to many salaries or retirement pensions (under 15 usd), but up until now we’ve all been able to afford it. The majority of the spectators who I see in... My own choice, nonetheless, continues to be the darkness of the theater, the enormous screen, the solitude of my seat in the movie theater. Even in the eighties, during my childhood, I would see a lot of people in the theater when my parents took me.   They themselves, would sometimes ask a relative to look after my sister and me so they could go see a late-night movie where minors...   On Sundays, there’s a folk concert at 3 p. m. that has to finish before five so that they can offer the two film showings of the day at 5 and 8 p. m. Last Friday, I attempted to see the French Film ”Crime of Love” in that theater.   Back then it was three or four movies for only 10 centavos People save money, vacation time and special garb during the whole year to use on those days.

This short video is a “how to” about the currency in Cuba, how to use it, where to get it. Find out what a Cuban Convertible Peso is, where to get it, what currency to bring into Cuba, etc. The Cuban peso is typically used by the locals, and tourists are stuck with the convertible peso, which is about 25 times the value of the Cuban peso. Cuba has two currencies, the Cuban peso and the convertible peso. Cuban money. There are also smaller coins, but considering how expensive Cuba is, you probably won’t be using coins too often. And just to make things confusing, the one comes in a coin and a note, but you will typically use the note.

00 CUC (convertible Cuban currency) each. I therefore gladly accepted the invitation since it coincided with my having just completed some work with which I had been tasked, and since I now found myself with a bit of hard currency. He told me that in fact he was a native of that country, that as an adolescent he had come here to study, and that one day, while visiting the village, a Cuban girl had stolen his heart straight away. “Currently, we have two children – a girl and a boy – and I now feel like any other Cuban, but I am not the only one here. It had been many years since I had visited such a picturesque place, as being able to do so meant having a vehicle in good working order, and money to buy gasoline. Since their salaries were not enough for them to buy the things needed to return to Cuba, many had resorted to the dangerous work of drug running. It was like carrying a sign on your forehead that said, “Kill me. I am carrying cocaine. I asked about the Cubans who were there on a mission. Man: “I am Venezuelan, and I left my country because I am fleeing socialism. We did indeed find a great variety of well-prepared seafood at this location: porgy fillets, dogfish fillets, swordfish steaks, octopus, etc. The trip was quite pleasant, not only because the route we took was one of the few which had been properly paved, but also because it was lined with lovely plantings on both sides of the roadway. Addressing the young man who had been identified as the Venezuelan, I asked him about his nickname.