2025.1

Banco Nacional de Cuba

1968

1960s

Cover (printed): - "CUENTA DE AHORRO" (Savings Account) - "BANCO NACIONAL DE CUBA" (around central seal) Interior, inside front cover (stamped in purple ink): - "MARIA ANTONIA ARUS CARABALLO." (account holder's full name) - Signature flourish (manuscript, in purple/violet ink, above the printed name — NOT the account holder's signature) - "BANCO NACIONAL DE CUBA / AGENCIA 4-10-18 / CALLE 23 No. 1054, e/ 6 Y 8 VEDADO" (branch identification stamp) Interior, first page (printed + handwritten/stamped): - "114-624" (form/stock number, top left, printed) - "BANCO NACIONAL DE CUBA" (printed) - Branch stamp (black ink): "BANCO NACIONAL DE CUBA / AGENCIA 4-10-18 / AGENCIA / CALLE 23 No. 1054, e/ 6 Y 8 VEDADO" - "DEPARTAMENTO DE AHORRO" (printed) - "Cuenta No. 26 265" (handwritten/stamped account number) - "Libreta N° 134698" (handwritten/stamped passbook number) Watermark in interior security paper (visible): "THE ROYAL BANK" / coat-of-arms motif — see Research Notes Language: Spanish

MATERIALS: Paper (kraft cardstock cover; mint-green watermarked security paper interior); printing inks (black, mint green); purple/violet stamp inks; black stamp ink; manuscript inks (signature) TECHNIQUES: Offset-printed cover and interior; debossed/letterpress seal on cover; rubber-stamped account-holder information and branch identification; handwritten signature

Good

This is a "libreta de cuenta de ahorro" (savings-account passbook) issued by the Banco Nacional de Cuba in 1968. Passbooks of this kind were the standard physical record of savings-account activity in Cuba: the customer carried the small book to the bank for every transaction, and tellers stamped or handwrote each deposit, withdrawal, and balance update directly into its pages. The libreta therefore became a continuous handwritten record of a personal financial life, gradually filling up as the years passed.

In October 1960, US and private banks were still operating in Cuba; the nationalization decrees of that month — Laws 890 and 891 — were aimed at definitively liquidating the economic power of privileged interests, expropriating 382 companies including 105 sugar mills and numerous distilleries, alcoholic beverage producers, construction, transportation, and food companies. By 1968, eight years into the post-nationalization era, the BNC was the only banking option in Cuba. March 13, 1968 — just months before this passbook would have been issued — marked Fidel Castro's announcement of the "Ofensiva Revolucionaria" (Revolutionary Offensive), in which the last ~55,000 small private businesses (bodegas, bars, barber shops, small workshops) were nationalized, completing the consolidation of state ownership of all economic activity. A savings account opened with the BNC in 1968 is therefore exactly contemporary with the moment when ALL economic activity in Cuba had been brought under direct state control — there was, by then, literally nowhere else to deposit money. This document is a small but concrete material trace of that historical moment.

The interior page is printed on security paper with a visible watermark, components of which include the words "THE ROYAL BANK" plus what appears to be an armorial/heraldic motif, indicating that repurposed security paper possibly from the Royal Bank of Canada, absorbed in 1960, was presumably used, or continued to be ordered from the same Canadian or international suppliers, by the BNC.