A fight poised to erupt in line at a bank in Havana and a fervent denunciation against the regime: this is what a video published on Facebook by Cuban activist Silverio Portal shows, recorded this week and summarizing in just over two minutes the exasperation of a population that can no longer endure.
In the images, Portal moves the camera along a long line in front of a bank branch while narrating the situation with indignation: "There is no money, there is nothing, this is lost, as the whole world knows, even the Eskimos know this by now."
At one point during the wait, a heated argument can be heard among people in the line: "Don't touch me," says someone as another tries to calm them down: "calm down." The physical tension among those waiting reflects the level of desperation these queues generate, which often last for hours with no guarantee of receiving cash at the end.
At the end of the tour, Portal points to a poster he is holding, one of the millions printed by the Cuban regime over the decades, and makes a direct accusation: "Look here... a man who led a nation to ruin." He concludes: "This is the culprit." The face on the poster is that of a smiling Fidel Castro, accompanied by the phrase: "For Cuba, united, we will triumph." The country's downfall illustrates just how much has been lost.
The landscape shown in the reel is not an isolated incident. Since August 2023, the regime has imposed limits on cash withdrawals at ATMs, capping them at 5,000 pesos per transaction, without resolving the shortage of physical money in the system. The result is an unsustainable contradiction: the government forces citizens to use the bank, but the bank has no money to give them.
In April 2026, the EFE agency reported waiting times of four to six hours at Havana banks, primarily involving retirees trying to collect pensions that in the informal market amount to less than 10 dollars a month. In Holguín, dozens of elderly people have been lining up since five in the morning to collect their meager payments.
The minimum pension has been set at 4,000 Cuban pesos since September 2025, according to the . This comes in the context of a cost of living that various analysts estimate to be above 35,000 pesos per month. A survey by the Independent Trade Union Association of Cuba in 2025 revealed that 99% of 506 retirees consulted in five provinces stated that their pension is insufficient for food.
The Cuban elderly who believed in the revolution are those who suffer the most from this crisis. Every month, the monthly payment in Cuba consists of elderly people in long lines waiting to collect a pension that barely lasts a week for food.
The collapse has structural causes accumulated over decades: blackouts lasting up to twenty, thirty, and forty hours daily that render ATMs and digital platforms unusable, outdated equipment, lack of internet connectivity, and a growing public distrust towards forced banking. In July 2025, the Banco Metropolitano acknowledged a "cash deficit" and the deterioration of its ATM network. In December of that year, it denied remittances to customers citing a "lack of cash", and in November, a "human tide" of over a hundred people gathered in front of a bank in Marianao demonstrating the collapse.
Due to the inability of the system to provide cash at the counter, the Central Bank initiated a pilot plan to pay pensions at private establishments that accumulate cash, a measure that implicitly acknowledges the failure of the state system. Meanwhile, Cubans across the country continue to wonder, as highlighted in a recent report, who turned withdrawing one’s own money from a bank into an extraordinarily difficult procedure.
The Portal video, recorded in June 2026, is the most recent expression of a crisis that, according to a Cuban intellectual cited this week, has reached a point where "there are people dying of starvation" on the island.
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