A public complaint shared this Friday on Instagram shows hundreds of people gathered outside the Metropolitan Bank branch located at the corner of O'Reilly and Compostela in Old Havana, at 10:40 in the morning, under the sun, waiting to withdraw cash.
The video, shared by user Irma Lidia Broek, captures the moment when the crowd shouts desperately, "The cashier, the cashier!"
According to reports gathered from the location, the staff attending to the ATMs within the institution intentionally deactivates them to prevent people from "bothering."
"Thousands of people crowd daily in front of this bank, under the sun, with the sole hope of being able to withdraw some of the money that they worked so hard to earn," Broek wrote in his post.
The incident is not an isolated event. The day before, another altercation at a bank line in Havana was reported, where neighbors were shouting: "There's no money, there's nothing, this is lost."
In April 2026, the EFE agency reported wait times of four to six hours at Havana banks, particularly for retirees attempting to collect their pensions.
In Camagüey, elders have been documented sleeping in the doorways of banks to secure their spot for the next day, while in Cienfuegos, the police were deployed to organize the lines of retirees due to the recurring chaos.
The Metropolitan Bank has over 500 ATMs distributed across the 15 municipalities of the capital, but according to recent reports, only about 200 are operational.
The power outages, which have lasted between 20 and 40 hours daily, render ATMs and digital payment platforms useless, exacerbating a crisis that was already structural.
In August 2025, frustration reached a point where an ATM in Havana was stoned during a blackout.
Since August 2023, there has been a withdrawal limit of 5,000 Cuban pesos per transaction at ATMs, with the shortage of physical banknotes remaining unresolved.
The economic context further exacerbates the situation: with the informal dollar hovering around 650 Cuban pesos, the minimum pensions of between 3,056 and 4,000 pesos are reduced to just four or six dollars a month.
The regime has attempted partial measures, such as enabling the cash withdrawal service through point of sale terminals in all branches of Banco Metropolitano since May 2026, or a pilot plan in Holguín to pay pensions through small and medium private enterprises, but none have eased the structural pressure.
"The economic crisis is serious, but the crisis of empathy and solidarity is destroying what little we have left. Enough of mistreating the ordinary Cuban!" concluded Broek in his statement.
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