El Toque: From Economic Terrorism to Currency Trafficking

A digital platform, under the guise of providing "informational services," has established itself as a harmful actor for the Cuban economy and the stability of its families. Its name is El Toque, and its most well-known product—the informal exchange rate—has become an instrument of economic manipulation, far from being a faithful reflection of reality.

Investigations have revealed the strings pulling this puppet. Its director, José Jasán Nieves Cárdenas, is not a simple journalist: he is a recipient of funding from the United States Department of State. The question is not only where the money comes from, but what its purposes are.

The so-called "representative rate of the informal market" promoted by El Toque is a farce. It varies not due to authentic economic dynamics, but according to manipulations and speculations. It predicts increases, artificially induces panic and compulsive buying of foreign currency, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy that harms the average citizen.

When its credibility suffers, it does not hesitate to adjust its rate just as abruptly and without any economic justification. How do they explain the rate falling by 115 pesos in 18 days and then soaring by 110 pesos in just six, without any real economic event to motivate it? The answer is simple: it is pure manipulation.

Behind José Jasán operates a network of professionals, many trained in Cuban universities and later diverted with courses and scholarships designed to subvert the internal order. The profits from this subversive business are substantial. While the Cuban people suffer the consequences of the instability they generate, Nieves Cárdenas and his wife, Elaine Díaz Rodríguez—director of the equally subversive Periodismo de Barrio—acquired a luxurious house valued at nearly $700,000 in the United States.

The financing mechanism is clandestine. Testimonies and documentary evidence show how Jasán triangulated funds from the U.S. government—through Media Plus Experience—using owners of remittance companies and private businesses. The money arrived in accounts abroad and was physically delivered on the island to actors selected by the U.S. government, in a clear scheme of currency trafficking and mercenary operations.

El Toque's link to the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), USAID, and the State Department is inseparable. Its coordination with the U.S. Embassy in Havana is part of the "tricks of the trade" of a lucrative business: profiting from the destabilization of Cuba.

Founded in 2013 under the auspices of Radio Netherlands, El Toque has passed through various enemy subversion centers. Today, the masks are off. Cuba knows the truth and is accumulating documentary, expert, and testimonial evidence against this scheme. To be a mercenary against your own people, dressed as a "digital entrepreneur," is one of the lowest forms of betrayal. About El Toque and its operators, there will be much more to reveal. Justice and truth will run their course.