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The recent and fierce campaign by the Cuban regime against the independent media outlet elTOQUE has an evident cause: its daily publication of the Informal Market Representative Rate (TRMi), an indicator that has become the most consulted reference by Cubans to understand the real value of the peso against the dollar, the euro, and the MLC.
What began as an informational service has transformed into an act of civil resistance: TRMi reveals, without slogans or speeches, the true magnitude of the national economic collapse.
Since early November 2025, official media and spokespersons for the Communist Party —including the television spokesperson Humberto López— have intensified a media offensive against the outlet, which they accuse of "economic terrorism," "mercenarism," and "currency trafficking."
However, the real truth is not the figures published by elTOQUE, but what those figures reveal: the ruin of the Cuban peso, the total loss of purchasing power of state salaries, and the growing social exclusion caused by the "partial dollarization" imposed by the regime itself.
An X-ray of poverty
A recent study by the Cuban Observatory of Human Rights (OCDH) reveals alarming figures: 89% of Cuban households live in extreme poverty.
According to the surveys conducted by the NGO, seven out of ten people have had to skip breakfast, lunch, or dinner at some point due to a lack of money or food scarcity, among other alarming findings.
That reality starkly contradicts the official narratives of “heroic resistance” or “socialist equality.” In practice, the country has become a fragmented market where only those with access to dollars or remittances can afford the essentials.
Partial dollarization: A disguised policy of exclusion
According to recent analysis by economist Pedro Monreal, the official strategy is not an accident: the "partial dollarization" is part of the regime's economic reforms, whose real objective is to raise foreign currency and shift the burden of the collapse onto the citizens' shoulders.
Monreal has warned that every time the authorities announce a new "exchange regime" or an expansion of sales in MLC, what they are actually doing is deepening the distortions: they further increase inequality, exclude those who do not have access to foreign currency, and reinforce the informal market as the only means of survival.
Imagine a family whose income comes exclusively from salaries in pesos. This family cannot afford basic food, medicine, or hygiene products sold in MLC stores.
They cannot save, nor can they plan. Their only resource is the black market, bartering, remittances, or resignation. The TRMi of elTOQUE —by reflecting the real value of the dollar— provides them with a frame of reference for survival. However, it also reveals that this survival relies on access to foreign currency: a kind of social division into two Cubas.
Meanwhile, those who have access to remittances, business opportunities, exile, or belong to the privileged class of the regime and its client networks, live in a different Cuba: a dollarized one, with access to stores, goods, and services that are unattainable for the majority.
This social segmentation is part of the new economic configuration: a militarized state capitalism, with the covert privatization of survival and a currency market dominated by the "elites" of a totalitarian communist regime.
Why the TRMi is a real threat to the regime
For a state accustomed to controlling the narrative, the TRMi presents a double challenge: economic and political. Economic, because it exposes the failure of the regime's economic and monetary policy and reveals the real need for foreign currency. Political, because it discredits the narrative of "leaving no one behind" and documents the gap, misery, and injustice.
Every time elTOQUE publishes its rate, it exposes the failure of successive “restructurings” and “correction of distortions”, as well as the lie of salary increases, the promises of stabilization, and improvement of the situation. It reveals that these are not temporary adjustments, but rather a structural collapse of the economic model under the so-called “continuity” of the government of Miguel Díaz-Canel.
That is why the regime does not simply attack the medium, but rather the information it provides. By criminalizing the publication of the TRMi, by accusing it of "mercenarism" and "economic terrorism," and by threatening with legal action, extradition, and imprisonment, what it seeks is not only to erase a piece of information but to eliminate an uncomfortable evidence of the national disaster.
The repressive offensive is no longer just symbolic
Since 2024, current and former collaborators of elTOQUE have reported interrogations, psychological pressure, threats, and manipulation of statements.
Recently, state television aired a media montage presenting its director as responsible for "tax evasion" and "currency trafficking"—accusations that do not stand up to serious scrutiny.
Doxxing was also used: addresses, personal data, and names of journalists and collaborators were exposed; they were even included in public lists supposedly "under investigation," with warnings of extradition or imprisonment if they returned to Cuba.
All of this has a clear objective: to instill fear, paralyze dissent, isolate independent journalism, and eliminate any means of independent reflection. But above all, to silence the voice that highlights the crisis, inequality, and exclusion with data.
The TRMi as a space of resistance and dignity
Despite the harassment, the TRMi of elTOQUE continues to be consulted every day by thousands of Cubans both on and off the island.
For many, it has become an essential tool: it allows them to calculate real prices, decide when to send remittances to family members, plan purchases, or simply understand the true value of their salary.
But more than an economic indicator, the TRMi is an act of dignity: a way to name the crisis, to make injustice visible, to expose authoritarianism and the lack of accountability from those who govern without social dialogue, without transparency, without democratic mechanisms, but rather through propaganda, repression, and impositions.
In a country where the state controls everything, from food to the internet, where the national currency is practically worthless, where basic services fail, and survival depends on accessing foreign currency, publishing the TRMi is a defiant and revealing act.
A choice between truth and censorship
The worsening of the crisis, the expansion of "partial dollarization," and the widespread impoverishment are not isolated events, but rather the result of systematic policy.
As Monreal has pointed out, this is a structural crisis: a dying economic model, sustained by militarism and corruption, that imposes the cost on the people.
And in that context, attacking the TRMi is not mere censorship: it is erasing evidence of disaster, it is trying to convince Cubans that their poverty does not exist, that dollarization does not exclude—rather it “stimulates” the economy and provides the necessary foreign exchange for social policies and other mechanisms of poverty redistribution.
But reality cannot be hidden with threats and propaganda. The TRMi exists, circulates, and is consulted. And as long as there are Cubans who want to know how much their salary is worth or what they can buy with their few pesos, the dictatorship will not be able to silence the truth: because those numbers were not invented by any anti-Cuban media—they were dictated by the streets.
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