This week, Fidel Castro announced that come Nov. 8, the U.S. dollar will no longer be legal tender in Cuba. Anyone in Havana who has a bank account in U.S. dollars will now have to accept newly stamped out "convertible" pesos as a substitute. Forget your dollar savings. And too bad if you don't think those "convertible" pesos are worth the paper they are printed on.
 
So what's behind Fidel Castro's raid on Cuban citizens' bank accounts? Quite simply, he's out of money. The tightened sanctions from President Bush are tightening the noose and the communist government can no longer get the trade financing it needs, now that the money taps to Havana have been shut down. Net result: cannibalization of Cubans' savings, which have been legal since 1993. At that time, Castro legalized the dollar as a last—gasp effort to survive after the Soviets cut him off. (Just as Lenin, under the New Economic Plan, introduced the chervonetz.) Now, with the Bush sanctions bearing down on him, Castro's lost that safety valve, too.
 
The State Department knows as much, and in a pleasant show of cojones, announced that Castro's moves are proof the U.S. embargo on Cuba is working. So much for traditional liberal wisdom that it isn't. With embargo doing its job, the curtain is coming down on the Castro regime in Cuba. 

A.M. Mora y Leon