Cuba blames online news site ‘elTOQUE’ for the country’s economic chaos 

Four years ago, Cuban journalist José Jasán Nieves, editor of the online news site elTOQUE, came to Abraham Calás, its director of innovation and development, with a proposal: why don’t we publish information on the Cuban foreign exchange black market? It was at that time, during the economic restructuring imposed by the so-called Tarea Ordenamiento that sought monetary unification in Cuba, that people began to trade online with the CUP (Cuban Peso) and the MLC (Freely Convertible Currency), without anything or anyone regulating the purchase and sale. Hence the creation of the Representative Rate of the Informal Market (TRMI), a currency tracking service that tells Cubans what the value of the peso is against the dollar, the euro and the MLC (Freely Convertible Currency) – a tool the government now considers its enemy.

“I never thought it would become an object of both desire and hatred for the entire Cuban propaganda apparatus,” Nieves told EL PAÍS. “Nor that they would disrespect the intelligence of the Cuban people so much by suggesting that a website is capable of influencing the entire economy of a country. If that were the case, we would be looking at the weakest government that has ever existed.”

The service is, without a doubt, the most popular in Cuba today. In a dollarized territory, which has never been able to solve the chaos of its multiple currencies, and with inflation at 10%, people wake up and want to know how much the little money they have is really worth. The information is sought in elTOQUE, which now puts the dollar at 450 CUP, a rate that has been rising since January when the exchange rate was 265 CUP. “The problem in Cuba is that there is a lot of demand and little supply: that is, there are very few dollars because there is no tourism, Cuban travel has declined, aid in cash is less common, and instead comes in the form of food or medicine. So, the price of the currency is high and tends to rise. People who have dollars can set the price if there is nothing to counterbalance it: now that counterweight is the elTOQUE rate,” explains Nieves.

In a country that has its former economy minister on trial, and no definitive solution to the blackouts, the food crisis and other shortages, the elTOQUE team is proving a handy scapegoat for the government, which has condemned its staff as “destabilizing” agents at the service of the CIA and on the payroll of U.S. agencies.

The latest major attack against elTOQUE came a few days ago, when the authorities not only insisted that the platform was “an instrument of cognitive warfare against Cuba,” but also published files on 18 of its staff members, who are residents of the U.S., Mexico and Spain, and who they claim are orchestrating “actions against national sovereignty.” While most of the media that flourished in Cuba during the Obama era has been dismantled, with journalists and their families threatened with jail or exile, the campaign to discredit elTOQUE has escalated to unprecedented heights. The government has said the team could face “serious legal consequences” such as “being extradited if they travel to a third country.” They may also be “wanted by law enforcement bodies, or, in the event of a change of government in their country of residence”, they could be “facing extradition.” The authorities also warned that, if any of the staff members tried to travel to Cuba, they could be imprisoned.

Despite being far from Havana, the journalists are experiencing sleepless nights. “Personally, it means, above all, that a possible trip to Cuba is very dangerous,” says Julio Antonio Fernández Estrada, an elTOQUE collaborator. “These kinds of threats destroy our families. In my case, it particularly affects my mother, who is very used to this kind of anxiety. For the government to say that if you visit Cuba, you might go to jail, well that is the kind of threat made by an unscrupulous mafioso. Professionally, it doesn’t mean anything to me, because they can’t take more things from me than they have already taken; they can’t take what I have decided to forego in return for a little dignity.”

An escalating media war

The threats and complaints against elTOQUE have peaked along with the value of the dollar on the Cuban black market. In 2022, Cuba’s state-run press unleashed a defamatory campaign against Nieves’ team, which ended with the group of 24 journalists based on the island being shut down. In 2024, when the dollar was approaching 400 CUP on the black market, the government unleashed a cyber war against elTOQUE, calling them mercenaries and threatening to bring a criminal case against them. When the dollar approached the scandalous sum of 500 CUP this year, the threats were ramped up again.

In November, eight people armed with loudspeakers and banners staged a protest outside the Spain Cultural Center in Mexico, headquarters of the 14th Latam Festival organized by Distintas Latitudes, in which Nieves was participating. The Mexican citizen Iván Carreño, a Communist Party militant linked to the Mexican Movement of Solidarity with Cuba, turned on Nieves, accusing him of being an individual that was a “part of the terrorism against Cuba” disguised as an activist. On social media, the government of Havana has also been spreading hate against elTOQUE; Cubans are being told that, if their salary is not sufficient, it is because elTOQUE is penetrating the Cuban market and undermining the authority of the Central Bank over monetary policy.

The editorial team of El Toque has been transparent about the methodology used for their currency tracker, validated by several economists. It has stated that the site calculates its exchange rate using artificial intelligence to scan messages posted online in which buyers and sellers state their intended purchase or sale prices for the various currencies. They have also stressed that the rate is an “informative” calculation, which “does not determine the market,” although it obviously has an influence by setting a benchmark.

According to Nieves, the latest threats made on national television and state platforms come precisely a month before the end of 2025, with the government still not having implemented a formal foreign exchange market with a floating and non-fixed rate, which it promised last year.

“They have a month left but I don’t think they have the financial conditions to implement it,” says Nieves. “That suggests they are preparing the conditions to impose their market, but it seems they are playing dirty because, for their market to prevail, they have to have a volume of dollars to sell and sustain that advantage, thereby competing with the black market for a while, until they make it completely official. I also believe that the effort they have put into [attacking] us is designed to divert attention at a time when they are extremely vulnerable, with a multiple crisis on their hands – health, financial, energy, food – which has been exacerbated by hurricane [Melissa] in eastern Cuba.”

In the midst of this media war, one question emerges: despite the fact that elTOQUE is supposedly responsible for destabilizing the economy, why has the government not banned it on the island, as it has done with other journalistic ventures it considers a threat? Nieves believes that the authorities know that the absence of a reference in the foreign exchange market would pose an even bigger problem. “That’s because a market without a reference is a much more chaotic one, and this reference is what stops the dollar from being worth 1000 pesos. Given that there is no economy to support it, the Cuban peso can only depreciate against other currencies.”

Helpless in exile

Eloy Viera Cañive, coordinator of elTOQUE’s legal department, does not believe that Cuba’s threats will affect staff members living in exile. “The manipulation is so crude and politicized, that it does not seem to me that any authority of an efficiently institutionalized country, or an international organization such as Interpol, would pay attention to a maneuver like this,” he says. According to Viera, the “official notification of the allegations that were never formally presented to us” took the form of their faces on national television. “The question is what the sentence would be, and I think it is definitive exile,” he adds. However, Viera flags up the impotence of the elTOQUE team in the face of these allegations coming out of Havana. “There has been no official notification given to any of those [team members] being investigated and, therefore, we have been defenseless in the face of an investigative process in which we are accused of complex crimes on a national scale.”

In an investigation riddled with errors, the government has even included people who have long since ceased to contribute to the news outlet in any way. Journalist Jéssica Domínguez, who stopped working on the team at the beginning of 2025 after eight years, appears on the list compiled by Cuban security. “I am concerned for my family on the island, and for my legal status, because I am still a Cuban citizen, and technically I should have the right to enter and leave my country whenever I wanted,” she says. “We cannot afford to ignore the seriousness of the allegations, although we are not sure how far they are willing to go. It leaves you in a vulnerable position, even when you are not living on the island.”

Circulation grows with condemnation

Despite the smear campaign denounced by organizations such as the Inter American Press Association (IAPA), confidence in elTOQUE among Cubans continues to trump the fear being instilled by the authorities. “We have not seen any decrease in the use of our tool as a result of this campaign. On the contrary,” says Nieves. “In spite of everything, the dollar rate in Cuba today is still the elTOQUE rate.”

Circulation has risen from 50,000 and 60,000 daily users to more than 80,000, with 74% of visits from within Cuba. Regarding the currency tracker, elTOQUE has 127,000 users, 13,000 more since the beginning of the Cuban government’s smear campaign. They have also seen notable growth on social media and on their WhatsApp channel, where they went from 5,000 to 50,000 users in two months.

Despite everything, Nieves insists on the “deep satisfaction of having generated a solution with such direct impact on people’s lives.” And he will maintain the currency tracker until the Cuban government provides a reliable alternative. “It will exist as long as the government fails to establish an effective formal market,” he says.

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