A Cuban identified as Liss Karla La Loba posted a video on Facebook from San Antonio de los Baños, Artemisa province, in which she expresses anguish and desperation over her inability to access the money from her bank card to buy medication and food for her sick mother, who relies on morphine.
"Look, I need someone here in San Antonio de los Baños to tell me where I can go to withdraw 500 pesos from the card or to buy something with that imaginary money they gave us," says the woman in the recording, visibly upset.
The bank, as reported, only allows him to withdraw 500 pesos in cash and informs him that this operation can only be performed once a week.
"I'm going to the bank, because I can't, since my mom is dependent on morphine, to withdraw money, and the only thing they allow me is 500 a day. And when you get there, they tell you no, that it's once a week and with 500 pesos, my sister, there's no food here," she asserts.
The situation worsens because most of the MSMEs in her area also do not accept bank transfers, leaving her with no options to convert that digital balance into real goods.
"I have to have wet wipes, I have to have his food, the medications. I have to deal with a multitude of needs that I can't because the money is on the damn card. And I can't because nobody accepts it," he laments.
When she manages to find a seller who accepts transfers, the cost skyrockets: "You have to pay an extra 10%, 20%, or even 30% of whatever the person asks. And I am not a millionaire."
The video, which gained over 116,000 views and nearly 450 comments, reflects a banking crisis that is spreading across the island.
Liss Karla's testimony is not an isolated case. The government of the Granma province acknowledged in June 2026 that it did not have the funds to pay pensions to over 111,000 retirees. The Metropolitan Bank of Havana reduced the withdrawal limit from 5,000 to 3,000 pesos per transaction that same month, and more than 50% of the ATMs in the capital were not functioning in May 2026.
In Santiago de Cuba, commissions of up to 50% are reported for converting transfers into cash, and in Morón, Ciego de Ávila province, citizens must pay an intermediary 500 pesos just to obtain a number for their turn in order to collect their salary.
The vicious cycle is complete: the regime pays salaries and pensions through digital transfers, but state banks do not have real liquidity to back those balances; small and medium-sized enterprises do not accept transfers because they also cannot withdraw that money to reinvest it; and citizens are left trapped with a number on a screen that they cannot convert into goods.
The mandatory banking established since 2023 legally requires small and medium-sized enterprises to accept transfers, with fines of up to 60,000 pesos for non-compliance, and more than 475 establishments have been closed for violating this regulation. However, fewer than 10% of private businesses in provinces such as Sancti Spíritus and Pinar del Río consistently comply with the norm.
The video was published four days before the fifth anniversary of July 11, 2021, a date when San Antonio de los Baños was precisely the spontaneous starting point of the largest popular protests in Cuba since 1959. Several comments in the video explicitly reference that date as a possible turning point.
Liss Karla concluded her statement with a phrase that encapsulates the feelings of thousands of Cubans: "It seems like a lack of respect, just one more piece of crap."
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