Cubans uneasy, prideful of new peso

HAVANA -- In the dusty, dim recesses of his bookshop here, William Rodriguez Munoz keeps a worn leather wallet full of Cuban currency past and present, from the faded gray pesos of the time before Fidel Castro's revolution to the shiny notes that in recent days replaced the U.S. dollar as the dominant legal tender here.

Munoz, a retired leftist newspaperman who collects everything from stamps to coins, says he fully supports Castro's decision to ban the dollar from use in all transactions. It was, after all, a symbol of what communists like him consider an implacable capitalist enemy. Yet Munoz is going to hold on to the $7,500 in his savings account, which he is still allowed to have under the new law.

"I'm earning interest on it," he said "I'll only change the dollars for pesos as I need to, to buy necessities."

Munoz is not alone in his ambivalence toward the new currency, known as the convertible peso or, on the street, the chavito. Cubans greeted the changeover with a mix of patriotic pride and uneasiness.

While many people said they were happy to see greenbacks with portraits of American presidents leaving their streets, others said they were worried that the brightly colored peso, which the government has decreed is equal to the dollar, will not hold its value in the long run. A year from now the law supporting the convertible peso could not exist. This exchange rate only exists here in Cuba, because Fidel Castro is the only one who says it is true. So the smart ones who have money are guarding their dollars.

On Oct. 25, Castro decreed that beginning this month the dollar would no longer be accepted in stores, restaurants, hotels or anywhere else on the island, although dollar bank accounts would still be allowed. The government also declared that it would charge a 10 percent surcharge to exchange dollars for pesos after Nov. 15, encouraging citizens to turn in their dollars or deposit them in the bank. For Castro, the decision to ban the dollar in transactions was politically ingenious, diplomats and experts on Cuba say. In a single stroke, he has collected millions in hard currency that Cubans had saved, while putting an end to the long-running contradiction that his country's economy depends on the currency of his sworn enemy, the United States.

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