HAVANA -- Cuba Monday officially banned the U.S. dollar from circulation.
While the greenback had been Cuba's de facto second currency in conjunction with the Cuban peso, many businesses had preferred to get paid in U.S. dollars. But in an effort to keep the Cuban economy immune from U.S. control, Fidel Castro's regime will no longer accept the dollar as legal tender. In turn, the U.S. government has been stepping up efforts to keep the flow of dollars into the country at a bare minimum in an effort to weaken Castro's regime.
As a result, Cubans have had to rush to banks to get their dollars exchanged into convertible pesos. The initial deadline for the ban had been Nov. 7, but that was pushed back a week due to high demand for dollar-to-peso exchange.
