El Toque Responds to Sandro Castro on Cuba’s Informal Currency Market
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And Then Responds to Accusations of Manipulating cuban Dollar Rate
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The self-reliant media And Then has come forward to address recent accusations launched by Sandro Castro, who alleges the platform is “artificially inflating” the dollar rate in the Cuban informal market to benefit economically.
In a video published on social networks, the businessman and influencer strongly attacked the team behind the site that has, for years, established itself as a reference for documenting exchange rate behavior on the island.
According to Castro, And Then is a “dark elite that does not show its face and that, instead of helping, seeks to enrich itself at the expense of all of us.”
castro claims the media is manipulating the prices of currencies such as the dollar and the euro, repeating a pattern of “inflation” and “repurchase” to obtain a profit margin.
However,And then‘s response was swift.
Those responsible for the platform have dismantled Castro’s arguments, exposing what they describe as a strategy of political and discursive manipulation that attempts to divert attention from the real actors in the black currency market in Cuba.
“It is indeed not we who participate in the market, but you”
In their public response, and Then asserted that their role is not to intervene in or benefit from the informal market, but rather to reflect its behavior with statistical rigor.
“What has happened in recent days with the representative rate of the informal market is nothing more than a reflection of the market that we reliably monitor downwards and upwards,” they explained.
They added: ”If you have doubts, there are the real messages that we verify every day. Go and verify them,as tomorrow,if the offers go up again,no matter how many comments and campaigns they create on social networks,our arrows will be shown again.”
Far from being a speculative actor, And Then points towards another interest group: Cuban businessmen themselves, including Sandro Castro.
According to the platform, “Sandro Castro and many othre Cuban businessmen want to promote their own reference rate, a rate, according to them, that is fairer, but they do not recognize that many of these Cuban businessmen are the main actors in the illegal currency market.”
“if we follow Sandro Castro, those who want to assume the role of leaders in the informal currency market are its main actors, those people who, unlike And Then, do participate in that market and do benefit from it,” adds the digital medium.
Stand up to the elite that never did
The response also included a personal and political reflection on the composition of And Then and its trajectory so far.