Havana’s largest and oldest market is closed and will no longer sell in freely convertible currency.
14ymedio, Natalia López Moya, Havana, 24 July 2025 — A confluence of municipalities, a crossroads of avenues, Havana’s Cuatro Caminos is more than the colossal building that bears its name; it is also the name given to an area where commerce has traditionally been the reason for existence and the livelihood of its residents. Now, everyone who passes by notices that the market that gives life to the neighborhood has closed. “When it reopens, it will be in dollars,” a security guard tells 14ymedio.
With virtually all entrances blocked by metal doors, only one store on the upper floor, dedicated to the sale of household goods, remains operating at half capacity. The rest, including the supermarket, has already entered the racetrack that inevitably leads to dollarization, a path that several of Havana’s most important businesses have taken. The freely convertible currency (MLC), in which their merchandise was sold, failed to keep the spacious halls stocked with products.
The news was seen coming. A month ago, a butcher shop owned by Richmeat opened its doors in dollars, under the agreement signed with Cimex to manage an entire retail complex under the name La Favorita, as some of its products are called.
In recent years it was grim to wander through the shops located in the imposing building that occupies the entire block.
In recent years, it was grim to wander through the shops located in the imposing building that occupies the entire block and see the empty spaces, the deserted shelves, and the unlit lamps. The breath of the fula (US dollar) snorted in the neck of what was once the main market in the Cuban capital. With its two horns of plenty carved into the facade, the prosperous cornucopia was not reflected in its increasingly undersupplied interior. A commercial anemia that ended up affecting the entire area.
“Here we live off reselling and wheeling and dealing,” says a nearby lighter repairman who, between injecting gas into a lighter or changing the flint to create a good spark, hawks his tiny tubes of instant glue, a few packets of powdered soda, and “the little razors you can’t live without.” When the market supply dwindled, “people stopped coming from other neighborhoods to get hardware supplies, boxes of chicken, or paint for their homes,” he tells this newspaper. “Fewer customers, less business.”
The commercial weakness affected everyone. The elderly man who took advantage of the red light to clean the windshields of those arriving to buy a bathtub; the santera who read cards on the opposite sidewalk and received more customers when they stocked the butcher’s refrigerators; and the young man with a disability who, when turning the corner, set up a table with used plumbing parts to supply those looking for a sink or a drain, but the price in the store seemed too high. As word spread that the mall was “deprived,” everyone’s income also dried up.
Now, the hope is that the dollar will revive the so-called Single Market. “The next battle of Cuatro Caminos will be between people who have dollars,” quips the matchbox repairman. But it’s hard to believe that, as in November 2019, an angry mob will once again break down the doors, run up the stairs, ravage the shelves, and ravage the most prized merchandise. There aren’t that many Cubans with dollars, nor do they have that many ‘Lincolns’ in their pockets.
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