The new campaign against the daily publication of exchange rates in the informal market reflects the authorities’ panic over the collapse of the peso.
14ymedio, Madrid, 4 November 2025 — The war against El Toque has returned as quickly as the sharp rise of the dollar in recent weeks on the informal currency market, followed by an unusual pullback with the arrival of Hurricane Melissa. The appreciation of the greenback seemed unstoppable, from 360 pesos in May to 490 at the end of October. And yet, less than a week after reaching its all-time high, the dollar has retreated to 430 pesos in what appears to be more of a truce than a change in the upward trend.
This is not the first campaign by the regime against El Toque, which has been publishing up-to-date information on the informal currency market for years. The attacks, carried out through the state-run press and social media, intensify whenever the currency’s upward trend accelerates.
This time, the starting gun was fired by Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez last Saturday, when he published a diatribe in X against the independent media outlet, which he directly blames on Washington. “The US government organizes, finances, and directly executes a comprehensive destabilization program, as part of its economic war against Cuba, using Cuban-born operatives based in the United States and other countries,” he wrote.
According to the minister, “their mission is to depress the income level of the population through speculative manipulation.”
According to the minister, “their mission is to depress the population’s income level through speculative manipulation of the exchange rate, directly impacting price increases, the spreading of intimidating and alarmist messages on social media, and thus disrupting the natural behavior of the market.” In his statement, Rodríguez asserted that this causes severe damage to people’s incomes and affects the macroeconomy. “This involves laundering money from the U.S. federal budget, using funds allocated by the U.S. Congress and channeled through the State Department, non-governmental organizations, and contractors,” he said.
With the floodgates now open, Cuban economist Andrés Martínez Ravelo continues down this path, publishing an opinion piece in the newspaper 5 de Septiembre this Tuesday. The expert from Cienfuegos accuses El Toque of “penetrating the country’s economic logic, displacing legitimate monetary institutions.” Although experts have frequently criticized the Central Bank of Cuba for abdicating its responsibilities as the highest authority on monetary policy by leaving its powers in the hands of the government, Martínez Ravelo maintains that it is ElToque that is usurping its role and encroaching upon state sovereignty.
“The Central Bank maintains an official rate of 1 dollar = 120 pesos. However, that rate has been eclipsed by the Representative Rate of the Informal Market (TRMI), published by a website that operates from abroad and has de facto assumed the role of exchange rate benchmark,” the economist argues, unaware that this summer Minister Joaquín Alonso Vázquez revealed during a meeting that the Government is the first to use that reference when making very similar calculations.
Minister Joaquín Alonso Vázquez pointed out during a meeting that the Government is the first to use that reference
At that time, Pavel Vidal himself, the Cuban economist in charge of the Observatory of Currencies and Finance of Cuba (OMFi), considered that this was proof that “for those responsible for economic policy, the value and trajectory of the dollar price in the informal market is a useful and necessary reference.”
Martínez Ravelo, however, asserts that “there is no other documented case in which a digital platform without a headquarters in the country, financed by foreign agencies,” sets a benchmark. The economist reviews the latest statistics, which indicate that from January to October the dollar rose from 265 pesos to 490, while the euro increased from 280 to 540 pesos. “This sustained increase has had a direct impact on the decrease in the purchasing power of Cubans, due to its influence on the real prices of goods and services,” he laments.
In his opinion, private businesses – which account for 55% of retail sales – “adjust their prices to maintain profit margins in foreign currency,” he says, a dynamic that is not reflected in the consumer price index (CPI), “which is not related to the everyday perception of citizens.”
The economist dedicates two paragraphs to the recurring official discourse on US pressures, economic warfare, destabilization, the CIA and the NED, until reaching his conclusion: Cuba’s monetary sovereignty “has been hijacked by those who design and finance the aberration that they themselves propagate.”
Although the text has not yet been answered by those mentioned, economist Pedro Monreal entered the debate this Monday to respond to the foreign minister. “Someone should explain to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that the devaluation of the peso in the informal market, and the informal market itself, primarily express the failure of the ‘design’ of the ‘restructuring’. Murillo can surely enlighten them on the subject by repeating what he said in October 2021,” he asserted.
Prime Minister Manuel Marrero announced to the Cuban Parliament the long-awaited establishment of a floating exchange rate for the peso.
At the end of last year, Prime Minister Manuel Marrero announced before the Cuban Parliament the long-awaited establishment of a floating exchange rate for the peso, although several Cuban economists had already pointed out the difficulties of such a process. In August, Vidal advised the government to set the new exchange rate at 400, approximately the most common rate then in the informal market and close to the rate the Ministry was using, albeit unofficially.
At that moment—coinciding with a rebound in the dollar’s price—the economist took the opportunity to reiterate, yet again, the OMFi’s complete lack of influence on the value of money. “This is further confirmation that the indicator offered by El Toque does not interfere in a speculative manner, but merely reflects the trends and needs of the foreign exchange market.”
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