The doble moneda: A multi-site ethnography of monetary practices in Cuba
Type de matériel :
42
Until January 2021, the Cuban monetary system consisted of two national currencies, a strong one called the peso convertible, the indigenized form of the dollar, which it replaced in 2004, and a weak one, called the peso cubano. This system was unified by centralized issuance and state-guaranteed reciprocal convertibility. Although these two currencies monopolized the account and payment functions for internal transactions, they did not allow the same goods and services to be counted or paid for in the same places, or between the same people. As the central characteristic of the modern ideal of money is that it moves across different spheres of exchange, we can think of these two sub-systems as two spheres of monetary transactions delimited by site-specific monetary protocols. In this respect, the Cuban doble moneda was similar to certain so-called traditional monetary systems, in which the multiplicity of units of account made it possible to mark the boundaries between the different social groups of users. Drawing on a multisite ethnographic survey, I describe here the social practices linked to this dual currency. I show that the fundamental challenges of the dual currency lay in the movement between the spheres of transactions when users’ activities crossed the monetary borders where conversions took place.
Réseaux sociaux