Desperate Cuba Announces Free-Market Reforms

Months ago, President Trump suggested he was putting Cuba on the back burner while he dealt with Iran. At the time, Cuba was talking pretty tough about the need to fight to the death if necessary should the U.S. try to invade the island.

But as we all know, the situation in Iran didn’t take weeks as Trump seemed to think it would. Instead it just dragged on for months until a deal was signed between the US and Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz this week. But while all of that was happening, the situation in Cuba continued to get worse. The island announced it had run out of oil a month ago and since then most people have more hours without electricity than with it.

Cuba is now four months into a US oil blockade that has seen the island drained, in almost every way. Three weeks ago, the energy minister, Vicente de la O, told the public: “We have no fuel, no more reserves.”

The state electric company is fighting to provide even a few hours of power a day. Petrol stations have been empty for months. And for those who use gas canisters to cook, charcoal and even wood are now the only options.

Martha Pérez is a resident of the poorer Havana neighbourhood of Bahía. “I can buy gas in an online supermarket,” she said. “But the price is US$29 a bottle when it used to be just a few cents when I bought it from the state.”

The US was known to be talking to well-connected people in Cuba but so far no agreement has been reached.

“Both sides just seem dug in as all hell,” said Michael Bustamante, chair of Cuban and Cuban American studies at the University of Miami.

Bustamante believes the only hope is for the Cuban government to make big concessions. “Otherwise Washington may bring about their exit by force anyway, with untold consequences,” he said.

But it seems Cuba has decided to do something pretty drastic by communist standards. Yesterday they announced plans to privatize significant portions of the island’s economy. In theory, this would take large portions of the “means of production” out of the hands of the regime.

In a landmark speech to the National Assembly, Prime Minister Manuel Marrero unveiled 176 measures aimed at rolling back the state’s role in the economy and attracting investment in everything from banking to tourism and agriculture…

Under the reforms, foreign investors are no longer required to form joint ventures with the state, large private enterprises will be authorized, and both Cuban and foreign investors will be allowed to acquire stakes in state companies…

They were adopted in a unanimous show of hands by lawmakers at a session which ended with President Miguel Diaz-Canel intoning Castro’s famous revolutionary slogan: “Socialism or death!”…

A defiant Diaz-Canel insisted that the government was “not doing this because of pressure from the Yankees,” but to “preserve” socialism.

The slogan is a bit confusing in this situation because it sounds like they are explicitly choosing free markets rather than death. 

The secret of making sense of all this is the fact that Cuba has done this before. When the situation gets bad and they are facing the possibility of domestic protests, Cuba vows reforms as a way to pacify people. Once the people are no longer in danger of standing up against the government, the communists crack down on whatever freedoms were briefly granted.

But it’s possible that four months in darkness had led to some reconsideration of what “communism” looks like. After all, China is officially communist but it’s also heavily involved in manufacturing and selling just about everything to western markets. Cuban communism could look more like that, i.e. lots of tourists and small businesses dealing with America but the same one party communist dictatorship in control.

One of the people waiting to see what happens next is Fidel Castro’s daughter, who has lived for many years as a critic of the regime in Miami.

[Alina] Fernández, 70, is the child of Cuba’s most infamous dictator and Natalia Revuelta Clews, a green-eyed socialite who pawned her jewelry to buy arms for the revolution…

…since she fled Cuba disguised as a Spanish tourist three decades ago, she has been, perhaps, his most recognizable and outspoken offspring…

Fernández openly criticized her father’s regime from the Miami radio station where for years she broadcast her show, “Simply Alina.”…

Fernández, for her part, keeps getting asked: What does she think Trump should do?

She has her theories and has concluded one thing to be true: “Dictatorships are established with a certain amount of help from outside. And they fall with a little push from outside, too.”…

Like so many in this city, Fernández is anxious to know what is next. Will her uncle and cousins capitulate? Will Trump order a military attack? What her lived experience has told her is this: “You can’t overturn a government that has been firmly in power for more than 50 years by banging on pots and pans.”

She’s right of course. If we want to see the end of the Castro communist regime in Cuba, Trump is going to need to give it a push. But after the deal with Iran we just signed, I’m not sure anyone is confident about the outcome.

Editor’s Note: Thanks to President Trump and his administration’s bold leadership, we are respected on the world stage, and our enemies are being put on notice.

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