In 2021, Xiomara Castellanos, an 80-year-old Cuban pensioner, was delighted when the government announced a sharp rise in wages and pensions as part of a currency reform. But she never imagined that prices would soar so high. Cuba is one of the Latin American countries most affected by inflation, which has taken its inhabitants, unaccustomed to this phenomenon in the island's socialist economic system, by surprise. IMAGES AND SOUNDBITES