The Cuban convertible peso meets this December 20, 19 years in circulation. This, perhaps, is his last birthday.
CUC (for its acronym in English Cuban Convertible) was born by decree of Hector Rodriguez Llompart, former Minister-President of the now defunct National Bank of Cuba. Its birth certificate was resolution 357 of that institution. It was the winter of 1994 and the Cubans left behind one of the worst years of the crisis dubbed the Special Period.
As a currency, its mission was “to be used in commercial transactions made on the premises duly authorized to operate in freely convertible currency” and serve “for the payment to be made by institutions authorized by the Government to implement the system of stimulation in cash in freely convertible currency for their workers.”
The convertible peso had a “marginal child”. Even it didn’t have an original design on the reverse of each of its bills. For a decade, it circulated with the same picture repeated on both sidea: the Cuban national coat-of-arms.
About to turn ten, another resolution of the Central Bank of Cuba determined the replacement of all U.S. dollars for convertible pesos: a decision that changed the view that the Cuban population had of the “other” peso.
A few months later came news that upset their values: CUC was worth more than the dollar itself. The convertible peso entered the same club of currencies more appreciated than the greenback, where reliable Swiss franc and the pound sterling were ancestral.
But times changed. They are preparing the convertible peso to leave this world, victim of a massive money heart attack. His death will be sudden; his obituary will appear in all newspapers in Cuba and will be read onradio and television. That day, there will be no more news.
The coffin of the CUC will be charged an unknown number of Cuban pesos. People want it to be less than twenty-four … the less the better.
