The businessman and influencer Sandro Castro, grandson of the late dictator Fidel Castro, celebrated on social media the new floating exchange rate announced by the Central Bank of Cuba (BCC) and claimed that “the people have triumphed over El Toque,” referring to the blockade against the independent media on the island.
In a "vampiric informational note," Castro presented the downfall of El Toque as a popular victory. He stated, "We have already succeeded in defeating El Toque, because I believe that the people raised their voices; many people were against El Toque, many people held acts of repudiation because they realized they were frauds, that they were not a reliable source."
He attributed the media blockade to the Cuban government and considered it a necessary step. He stated, “now the government is managing to block it across different platforms, although they shouldn't think that they will continue to insist on entering through WhatsApp groups and Telegram groups, which we cannot allow them to keep pushing to enter,” although he acknowledged not understanding “why it took so long to do it.”
From there, he focused his speech on the new official exchange rate announced by the Central Bank of Cuba. “This rate that the government is introducing, which will be variable, currently has a value of 410 for buying and 418 for selling. I believe that this is the correct situation,” he said, before admitting that “the bank does not have currency to sell” and that “the currency is handled by street money changers who work for remittance senders connected to the United States.” He also requested that these actors not be seen as enemies, “because they are the ones who provide us with dollars to work with and who possess them,” and proposed that “these individuals should use the bank’s rate as a reference, as they used to have with El Toque,” acknowledging that “they will want to earn something.”
He closed his message with a call for cooperation among Cubans: “The solution must come from us, among Cubans; we shouldn’t harm or kill each other.”
Before posting the video, Sandro Castro had shared several stories on Instagram about this. "Hey, yes, my people, all my vampires, all my Cubans, we managed to beat the Toque. You won't be able to find the Toque's page in any way, even with a VPN. So now is the time for us to use the reference page of the National Bank... which has a value of 410," he said in a video he captioned: "Goodbye to the Toque. Today’s reference value is USD 410. We'll see tomorrow. Don't pay a peso more than that."
The blockade on El Toque
On December 17, a day before the announcement from the Central Bank, El Toque publicly denounced that its website was being blocked from Cuba. “We have received strong signs that the site eltoque.com is being blocked from Cuba, which is preventing our audience from accessing our website normally,” the outlet noted in its social media statement, accompanying the message with the phrase “We are under attack.”
The team stated that the blockade was in addition to a denial of service (DDoS) attack they had been experiencing since that morning, and they asked users to document any errors encountered while trying to access the page.
The EFE agency, cited by Swissinfo, confirmed the statements of the media's director, José Jasán Nieves, who accused the Cuban Government of being behind the attack. “They managed to bring us down,” said Nieves, asserting that the site was the victim of a “bot network” and that the website remained inaccessible from the island.
A speech that prolongs its confrontation with El Toque
The confrontation between Sandro Castro and El Toque had been escalating since October. In previous videos, he accused the media outlet of provoking the rise of the dollar in the informal market, called it a “dark elite”, and even claimed that it had made “128 million dollars in a single day”.
In November, he also announced his own project, "Vampicash Cup," stating that it was "already created digitally," but required "government approval to have legal status and be something solid, transparent, and trustworthy."
The new rate from the Central Bank of Cuba
On December 18th, the Central Bank of Cuba announced a new floating exchange rate applicable to individuals and non-state management forms. The president of the BCC, Juana Lilia Delgado, explained that the system will divide the exchange market into three segments and will allow the rate for the private sector to fluctuate according to supply and demand.
The first official report set the dollar at 410 CUP and the euro at 481.42 CUP, figures very close to those reported in the informal market by El Toque. Authorities defended the measure as a step towards a "more transparent and functional" market.
The video of Sandro Castro, for its part, provoked an avalanche of comments. Many users harshly criticized him: "Go play revolutionary, jerk, living the rich life at the expense of a people's suffering," wrote one. Another added sarcastically: "Sixty years of hunger and misery, and people still believe a Castro."
Some comments resorted to sarcasm: “Stop everything, the abnormal one is going to talk about the economy,” “It sounds like the news program or Mesa Redonda speaking,” “El Toque: Ctrl+C, Banco Central: Ctrl+V.”
Among the few supportive comments were phrases like: “For the first time, I hear him say something logical” and “He is right; we need to help each other.” However, the majority insisted that the issue is not the rate, but the system: “He talks about hospitals, hunger, power outages, not the dollar,” wrote one user.
The reactions reflect the mixture of indignation and distrust with which a significant portion of the population perceives any discourse close to power, even when it is disguised as a conciliatory message.
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