‘Worst moment in the history of Cuba’: triple-digit inflation puts nation in turmoil

Orestes, a Cuban black-market businessman, is doing something that should be unremarkable. From his living room in central Havana, he’s taking US dollars from a tourist and exchanging them for Cuban pesos.

“This moment is the worst moment in the history of Cuba, about economy,” Orestes says. Like many people I speak to, he declines to provide his last name for fear of retribution for his anti-government stance.

The 63-year-old also sells basic goods such as bread and beer, bought to supplement government food rations. Cuba — a country with no privately owned supermarkets (or official currency exchanges) and shortages