A new luxury supermarket has opened its doors in Havana under the name of the chain Supermix, located on 17th Street between M and N, in El Vedado, within the Focsa building, and it only accepts cash in dollars or international cards, in a country where the average salary is equivalent to between 13 and 16 dollars per month.
The venue occupies the space of the former CUC market and was documented in a video on Facebook from the JSant TV channel, which garnered over 302,000 views, generating a wave of reactions among Cubans both inside and outside the Island.
The narrator of the video describes a "first-world" aesthetic that has nothing to do with the classic supermarkets of the country: "We immediately discovered that in Cuba there is a new supermarket in American dollars that literally had everything; we didn't think about it for even a second."
The establishment offers a variety of meats in different formats, fish, seafood, French fries in various cuts, ice creams and sweets, bread, dairy products, oils, and beverages.
Hygiene and cleaning products, as well as other items such as coffee makers and cups, are also sold.
The contrast with the reality of the ordinary Cuban is shocking.
The average Cuban salary in 2025 was just 6,930 pesos per month, equivalent to between 13 and 16 dollars at the informal exchange rate, while covering basic needs -food, hygiene, medications, transportation- can require more than 50,000 pesos a month, according to estimates.
Supermix is joining a trend of accelerated dollarization in Cuban commerce that the regime has promoted since 2020, despite having historically labeled the dollar as the currency of the "imperialist enemy."
By May 2025, at least 85 stores in Cuba were operating exclusively in dollars, far exceeding the 7% that the government itself had promised as the maximum limit.
The supermarket at 3rd and 70, inaugurated in January 2025 in the lower level of the Gran Muthu Habana hotel as the first major reference for this model, temporarily closed in May 2026 due to a lack of diesel for its power plant.
The contradiction of the model reached a new level on May 27, when the Cuban-Slovak joint venture Proxcor S.A. inaugurated a store with "100% Cuban" products that can only be purchased with dollars, triggering a wave of outrage on social media.
"Made in Cuba and sold to the Cuban people on their own island in the enemy's currency? You are a disgrace... Shameless in every way," wrote a user on Facebook.
Meanwhile, in Matanzas, the dollar stores of the Cimex/Gaesa chain are being boarded up with metal sheets to protect them from theft, in a context of power outages and increasing insecurity.
The image left by Supermix is that of a regime that creates showcases of abundance for those who have dollars, while the majority of Cubans cannot meet their basic needs with the salary that the state itself pays them.
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