For nearly six years, the Cuban digital news outlet El Toque was “invisible” to the country’s authorities.
Since 2021, however, mentions of it and attacks on its journalists became routine, to the point that its site was completely blocked on the island at the end of last year, José Jasán Nieves Cárdenas, editor in chief of exiled media outlet El Toque, told LatAm Journalism Review (LJR).
The increase in these attacks, which the site details in a timeline titled "From invisible to 'terrorists," is linked to financial publications that made it the reference for the informal currency market in Cuba, according to El Toque’s leadership.
“We created an information solution that calculates in real time the reference value of the informal dollar market. And that made us, imagine, almost like the Central Bank of Cuba,” said Nieves, who works from the U.S.
The work of El Toque is no small feat. Cuba has been unofficially dollarizing – replacing its currency with the US dollar – though the move was partially accepted by the government on Dec. 11. Since 2021, there has been a lot of demand for the currency. Basic goods like gasoline and even mobile phone internet recharging are priced in dollars.
“There is a huge demand for foreign currency to buy basic goods, and at the same time [the government] isn’t selling it,” Nieves said. This is why the informal market is gaining importance, he added.
Based on information gathered through various informal market channels, El Toque publishes the daily exchange rate. Nieves said this gradually became the official reference rate, to the point that he knows of instances where the media outlet’s rate is used in businesses such as restaurants or taxis.
For a government that until a few months ago insisted that one Cuban peso was equivalent to one US dollar, seeing rates above 150 was likely a threat. The smear campaigns, which were the first type of attacks against the media outlet, intensified precisely when the Cuban peso reached record highs, Nieves said. For example, when it reached 200, 300 and 400 in the last year.
These campaigns, Nieves said, promoted especially through pro-government media and social networks, sought to cast doubt on how El Toque obtained information and thus question the media outlet’s credibility. It was accused of being part of the economic war against Cuba, of being allied with the United States and even of selling dollars to make money, Nieves said. Official media once published a photograph of the house where the journalist currently lives in exile, claiming he paid for it with money from these activities.
"[Their] intention is to destabilize that market, to sow doubt, to create unease, so that people don't know who to believe," Nieves said.
Pressure against El Toque continued to mount throughout 2025. In November, Nieves was the victim of an act of intimidation by a group of protesters who, using megaphones and signs, accused the journalist and the media outlet of being “mercenaries in the service of imperialism” and “manipulators of the Cuban economy.” The incident occurred while Nieves was participating in an event in Mexico.
That same month, the Cuban government announced that it was opening a criminal investigation against 18 members of El Toque, including Nieves and people who are no longer part of the media outlet, accusing them of “economic terrorism.”
Cuban state media republished this alleged investigation, including all the personal information of those named. Nieves has been particularly targeted; his address in the United States was even published in one of Cuba's state media outlets, and he has received threatening messages, demonstrating that he is being monitored in exile.
The escalation reached its peak on Dec. 17, 2025. That day, between 11:30 a.m. and 2:00 p.m. Cuban time, the El Toque website received distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks that overwhelmed them, Abraham Calás, El Toque's innovation director and developer, told LJR.
According to Calás, the volume and form of the attack, distributed across dozens of countries simultaneously, leads them to suspect the use of a botnet, a network of controlled computers that seeks to overwhelm servers.
Additionally, the team also identified that El Toque’s site and applications were blocked in Cuba.
Media outlets aligned with the state like Razones Cuba and Cuba Debate have published stories accusing El Toque of playing a role in the economic war, justifying the blocking of websites like this one. Sandro Castro, grandson of the late Fidel Castro, posted videos supporting the blocking of El Toque and even attributed the block to the government, stating that he didn't understand "why it took so long" to do it.
These direct attacks on the site, Calás said, are more sophisticated and larger in scale than what they used to receive. Like Nieves, he emphasizes how these attacks differ from smear campaigns.
“We have gone from trying to circumvent basic blockings to facing a coordinated assault at the infrastructure level, which requires a very significant mobilization of resources to neutralize,” Calás said.
In addition to the technological aspect of the attacks, something that Nieves and Calás highlight is the moment in which the attack occurred.
“The blocking and direct attack on the site's infrastructure only occurred from the moment the floating rate was created by the Cuban regime,” Calás said.
On Dec. 18, the Central Bank of Cuba published the exchange rate for the dollar at 410 Cuban pesos. At that time, El Toque had a rate of 440 pesos, Nieves said.
Indeed, on the Central Bank of Cuba's website, the earliest date in the historical record of the exchange rate for the US dollar is Dec. 18, 2025. Rates continue to be published daily, with very little variation. The largest jump occurred in January 2026 when the United States carried out military action in Venezuela.
Calás said that on Dec.18 the site had a larger volume of attacks, but it was stopped due to the measures the team took after the attack the day before.
In response to the blocking in Cuba, El Toque has implemented different strategies to allow citizens to continue receiving its information.
Nieves, for example, highlights how for many years they have focused on achieving multichannel communication: that is, not relying solely on their website. El Toque has an app and a presence on almost all social media platforms with a large following.
“We have one goal with all of this: to ensure that independent and verified information continues to reach Cuba, no matter how much censorship methods change, and without burdening the audience with complex technical configurations,” Calás said.
The blocking of El Toque appears to remain in place in Cuba. According to the Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI), a non-profit, free software project that seeks to promote decentralized initiatives to document internet censorship worldwide, as of Feb. 15, 2026, the site was still blocked in the country.
Although the organization notes that it may register “false positives,” Calás said that the main way to verify its blocking comes from its own audience, who share screenshots with them.
Other independent outlets have been blocked in the country. El Toque may have been the remaining holdout.
As of 2025, at least 23 independent media sites were blocked, according to a report by Guardianes Digitales. Outlets such as 14ymedio, ADN Cuba, CiberCuba, Cubalex, CubaNet, Cubanos por el Mundo, Diario de Cuba, El Estornudo, Gatopardo, Misceláneas de Cuba, Proyecto Inventario and Rialta were among those blocked, according to a Freedom House report from May 2024.
In addition to media outlets, the report added, pages considered to be activist, related to human rights, or generally critical of the government are also being blocked.
Added to this are the obstacles to accessing the internet. For example, internet access is provided solely by the Cuban Telecommunications Company (Etecsa). Its infrastructure is entirely controlled by the government, and since 2021, there have been reports of “deliberate” restrictions aimed at limiting communications in the context of demonstrations, according to the 2024 annual report of the Office of the Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), published on March 3, 2025.
Furthermore, in 2025, Etecsa announced a dollarization of its rates and an increase in them.
“With that, they sought two things. First, to obtain more dollars because mobile data top-ups were directly dollarized. And on the other hand, it logically impacted internet consumption within Cuba, as it was more expensive, creating a greater barrier to access,” Nieves said. “In that way, the regime also ensures that less information circulates within the island.”
In addition to restrictions on information, there are constant violations of press freedom and repression of journalism in Cuba. The beginning of 2026, for example, brought an “escalation” of arbitrary detentions, house arrests and police harassment against independent journalists, according to the Inter-American Press Association (IAPA).
Among the incidents highlighted by the IAPA are the arrest of journalist Henry Constantín on three occasions in less than 12 days, the arrest of Yoani Sánchez, director of the news outlet 14ymedio, and her husband and fellow journalist, Reinaldo Escobar, and at least five other journalists.
“The Cuban regime has chosen to respond to a deep economic and social crisis with more repression and more censorship,” Pierre Manigault, IAPA president, said in a statement. “These abuses are not isolated incidents, but rather part of a deliberate strategy to prevent independent journalism from documenting the crisis, exposing social discontent and breaking the information blockade imposed by the state.”
This article was translated with AI assistance and reviewed by Teresa Mioli
