Cuba enters the distant 65th year since the insurrectionary victory against the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista. It is known in advance: there will be no pomp or big speeches this January 1st. The island faces a crisis of proportions: recessionthe failure of the economic program, and daily tensions that speak of a society in the abyss, with levels of everyday violence without precedents.
The ghost of social outbreak of the July 11, 2021 flutters. The wounds of that protest history are open: 2,000 judicial charges for contempt and sedition. The punitive exercise has not completely silenced a population that, since that episode, has redoubled its desire to leave. During the last two years, 425,000 citizens emigrated to USA, which represents 4% of its inhabitants. This lacerating statistic does not take into account Cubans who went to Europe, Latin America or Russia.
“It is time again to rectify,” said the president Miguel Diaz-Canel in the Christmas Eve of the shortage. The current leadership claims to have learned from Fidel and Raul Castro “the importance of timely correction in any situation that could compromise the future of socialist construction.” The word “rectification” is part of the state language, as is “self-criticism.” Moments of contrite admission of failures that are repeated periodically.
Rectification
Not in vain, Diaz-Canel He recalled that in 1986, and in the midst of another complex circumstance, the late commander in chief launched the “process of rectification of errors and negative trends” that did not come to fruition because, the president said, the Soviet Unionthe main ally of Havana throughout the Cold War. “In the year 2000, Fidel himself urged us to change everything that should be changed, with a sense of the historical moment, and five years later, in 2005, from the University of Havana, he warned that the Revolution we could destroy it ourselves.”
The style of self-flagellation of the authorities in the face of the lack of results is familiar to an overwhelmed society. The new call to correct what was done wrong coincides with unfortunate news. The economy has collapsed close to two points in 2023, according to calculations by the Economy Minister, Alejandro Gil Fernandez. The inflationinformed the National Assembly of People’s Power (legislature), reached the 30% annuallyalthough the perception of consumers is that prices They escalated more than officially calculated. Gil Fernández, like Díaz-Canel, nevertheless trusted that “this time” the right course will be taken. “The traditional triumphalist speech of the Cuban Revolution is unsustainable in the current circumstances,” said the digital publication ‘Joven Cuba’..
From failure to failure
The island lives essentially on tourism international. They landed in the largest of the Antilles almost 2.5 million visitors, most of them Canadians and Russians, against the expected 3.5 million. Cuba has become a less attractive destination than other Caribbean places. This contraction affects general economic performance. However, the reasons for the increasing deterioration of living conditions, with scenes of unknown hunger and destitutionare related to the recognized failure of the call economic “ordering”. Under that name repeated ad nauseam in the press as a guarantee of prosperity, monetary and exchange unification was carried out, preceded by a strong devaluationan increase in prices and the reduction of subsidies.
Diaz-Canel and his team had to forget about their praise for the program launched at the beginning of 2021, still under the effects of the pandemic. The setback, the president insisted, cannot be dissociated from the “suffocation designed and applied against a small country by the most powerful empire in history.” The measures arranged by USA For more than half a century and accentuated years ago, they tend to indulgently explain almost all internal disasters. “I draw the attention of those who prefer that we ignore the term blocking. I wish it were to remove it from our daily lives and erase its threats and its effects on Cuban society. Doing so would be tantamount to acting like those who today seek to deny the Israeli genocide in Gaza.”
The time of adjustment
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From the disappointment due to the non-compliance with the goals set in the “regulation” another program of “macroeconomic stabilization”a concept that in the Latin American countries It is generally associated with “adjustment” and shock policies. The president denied that the measures had an imprint neoliberal. The ‘package’, as it is known, will, according to Diaz-Canel“a necessary leap” to make “more Revolution and more socialism“. Beyond the incorrigible optimism of the Government, the new rules imply an increase in fuel prices, public transport rates and electricity service and the definitive goodbye to the subsidy of food and other products that were included in the booklet. of rationing.
“We will move forward with the conviction that it is the correct path to improve the current situation,” said the Prime Minister, Manuel Marrero. New Year’s Eve saw long lines around gas stations. A meandering of cars accustomed to waiting, this time urgent due to the advertisements that hit the pockets. Waiting is a sacred verb in a Cuba that lives essentially off the remittances sent by migrants, and crosses the straits with imagination, picaresque and resigned acceptance of the indelible codes of the black market. That which never seems to be subject to rectification.