“It hasn’t been open for a month,” an employee of a small candy kiosk told ’14ymedio’.
14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez, Havana, 8 June 2025 — The showdown between the American dollar and the freely convertible currency (MLC) continues to be won by the dollar. The supermarket on 3rd and 70th, in Havana, has finally succumbed to the lack of supplies and the tough competition from its neighbor, the well-stocked store in fulas [dollars], inaugurated in January this year. This Sunday, customers who came to one of the most famous stores since the 90s in the neighborhood of Miramar found its doors closed and the interior dark.
“It hasn’t opened for a month,” said an employee selling jam from a small kiosk outside, the only place that survived the debacle. With his face glued to the glass, a customer tried to decipher whether there was any merchandise left that foreshadowed a reopening. The damaged door, the dirty glass and the floor slabs full of holes do not augur, however, a rapid return from what became more than three decades ago a place frequented by diplomats, officials and foreigners.
The store that was an emblem of dollarization from 1993 and then opened to the public has succumbed due to the weakness of the freely convertible currency. Its shelves and refrigerators, with scarce products, have not been able to compete with the new store, located on that same corner but across the street, on the ground floor of the hotel Gran Muthu Habana.
Belonging to the Caribbean Stores of the Cimex corporation, one of the many branches of Cuba’s all-powerful Armed Forces Business Management Group, the luxurious establishment admits three forms of payment: cash dollars, foreign cards and the so-called Classic card that is recharged with dollars. While the opponent’s butcher shop languished, its refrigerated windows were exhibiting hams, cuts of beef, countless sausages and those chicken breasts that many Cuban families have not tasted for years.
A month ago the battle ended quietly. Collapsed on the canvas from lack of resources, unable to recover, the market in MLC ended up surrendering. On the other side of the street, propped up by greenbacks, its foreign-currency adversary has continued to earn, since then, tens of thousands of dollars every day.
Translated by Regina Anavy
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