Ariel Maceo Tellez walks through Jaimanitas, west of Havana, Cuba, and says the sidewalks are full of ghosts. In the corners, full of memories, he has almost no friends left because most of them, in desperation, have thrown themselves into the sea to escape the economic hardships and political repression that reigns on the island.
“In the Cuban population, everyone who can emigrate. Last year 300,000 people fled poverty and hunger. A lot of my friends collect some boards and jump into the sea because they would rather fight the sharks than spend another day in this hell,” Tellez, a 36-year-old Cuban poet, told Noticias Telemundo in a phone interview.
According to the US government, 224,607 Cubans, more than 2 percent of the island’s 11 million people, immigrated to the United States in 2022.
The communist island in the Caribbean, home to just over 11 million people, made global headlines again this week when US media reports reported that the government had signed a multimillion-dollar deal with China to build a large scale nuclear power plant on its territory set up a secret spy center. Only 90 miles from Florida.
Rosa López, a Cuban woman, shows her fridge before cooking for her grandchildren May 18, 2023 in Mariel, Cuba. Ramon Espinosa/AP
Although the news has been denied by Cuban officials and the White House has confirmed that the reports are “inaccurate,” citizens like Andrea Rodríguez, mother of two children aged 6 and 7, are not sleepless over Chinese espionage and geopolitical concerns.
“What keeps me from sleeping is when my kids wake up hungry and I don’t even have a sweet potato to give them. It breaks my soul,” she explains desperately.
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The reports suggest so China would pay Cuba billions of dollars to set up the base to allegedly spy on the United States. Analysts consulted by Noticias Telemundo believe the communist government is making a series of previously unthinkable efforts to keep a slumping economy afloat.
Leasing land from Russia for 30 years, wooing the expatriate community opposed by revolutionary leaders in the past, and encouraging small and medium-sized businesses in a country that nationalized everything private after Fidel Castro came to power are some of the The contradictions that exist, say the researchers, show the seriousness of the country’s problems.
The red figures of the revolution
The island is gripped by one of the most severe crises in decades, as the nationalized economy has been slow to develop and fail to recover from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, a bumpy currency realignment, criticism of governance and tightening monetary policies has sanctions imposed by the United States.
In a Congress session last month, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Economy and Planning Alejandro Gil admitted that year-on-year inflation was 45.4% at the end of April, while cumulative inflation reached 11.39%.
“In 2021 and 2022, inflation rose by more than 100% year-on-year, which is why prices have skyrocketed. There is no way to contain the deficit and the debt must be around 20% of GDP. In addition, the tourism is still 40% below the 2019 records, so it does not generate enough foreign exchange and that has led to this nightmare,” explains Elías Amor, a Spain-based Cuban researcher and economist.
The constant increase in the price of basic foodstuffs is one of the biggest problems for the Cuban people. And the emergence of stores in freely convertible currency (MLC), a virtual currency based on rechargeable cards from abroad, has exacerbated the disparities between those who receive remittances and those who don’t.
These shops, which are private to many, currently sell some of the basic products that the Cuban state used to sell in shops for Cuban pesos, the currency in which salaries are paid.
“A normal salary is about 3,000 Cuban pesos, but an MLC costs 185 Cuban pesos. And if you go to the stores, a pack of chicken can cost about 10 MLC, so to get chicken you have to give more than half that.” Her salary. You can’t buy what you need, and it’s very desperate,” says Rodríguez.
In his speech to Congress, Gil referred to the country’s tourism crisis: as of May 3, one million visitors had been received, 119% more than on those dates in 2022, but only 51% of the 2019 figure.
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Scarcity and rising costs, the black market and resale of basic goods are affecting the historically low purchasing power of Cubans. “You can’t find things, and when you find them, they’re very expensive. A pound of lemon used to cost 5 or 10 Cuban pesos in Havana. Now you can find them for 200, nobody can bear these prices anymore,” says Tellez.
More poverty, inequality and an unstoppable exodus
According to United Nations estimates, Cuba imports 80% of the food it consumes. According to official figures, after falling 11% in 2020, gross domestic product barely recovered by 1.3% in 2021, closing at 2% last year.
“This crisis occurs amidst increasing stratification of society, rising poverty and inequality, and massive emigration as a result of the application of misguided fiscal and foreign exchange policies and the development of an incipient oligarchic capitalism,” summarizes Rafael Rojas. , historian and Cuban academic from the College of Mexico.
At the beginning of this year, the deepening crisis was already very present in the daily life of Cubans. For this reason, Anyell Valdés, a Cuban, took her children to an expensive restaurant in Havana, where they ate lobster, even though she knew she couldn’t pay the bill. The woman said it was a protest against inflation and shortages.
“I focused on what my kids wanted to eat, not what it cost,” he said in an interview with Noticias Telemundo.
Analysts like Amor and Rojas and others believe that the effects of the severe economic crisis have prompted the Cuban government to take a series of desperate measures to ease the discontent on the streets of the Cuban people.
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“From what the leaders have told us, after all the sacrifices and misery, this is the hunger revolution,” Tellez commented, discouraged.
“handover” of the country to the Russians
The Moscow-Havana alliance gained new impetus last May after both countries reiterated their desire to strengthen Russia’s financial and business presence on the island through measures such as tariff exemptions, 30-year land concessions and links between their banking systems.
Rojas maintains his reservations about reforms aimed at attracting Russian investment, particularly in strategic areas such as agriculture, banking and finance.
There is a lot of subterfuge, propaganda and pressure in this whole Russian movement.”
Rafael RojaHistorian
“I don’t think that in the current context a subsidiary relationship like that with the Soviet Union is being sought. That is why the Russians are demanding structural reforms on the island through the Stolypin Institute. If these reforms are implemented.” “It will be necessary to assess the concrete results because there is a lot of simulation, propaganda and pressure on the United States and Europe in this whole Russian movement to make their relations with the island more flexible,” warns the historian.
Despite the passage of time, the 1962 crisis that brought the US and Soviet Union to the brink of nuclear war over the installation of launch pads and nuclear missiles in Cuba is still remembered. Not all Cubans welcome the Russian presence in the country.
“This is supposed to be a sovereign revolution, the leaders spend all their time talking about independence. And now it turns out that, just like in the ’60s and ’70s, We hand over the country to the RussiansSays Tellez.
For his part, Amor considers the plans for economic ventures between Russia and Cuba to be a “great simulation”. He warns that such initiatives have not yielded good results in the past because the Russians are pursuing pragmatic policies and the serious shortcomings of the Cuban economy require deep financial and political changes.
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“I think that all the land leasing, that the Russians will take care of small and medium-sized businesses and that they will produce sugar is a lie. The problems of the Cuban economy will not be solved.” “Either by the Americans or by the Russians, the Cubans have to solve them,” he explains.
Cuba is courting emigrants that it supposedly doesn’t need
In the recent past, and as economic troubles have become an inevitable challenge, some Cuban officials have been making calls for the diaspora of millions of citizens who have left the island to invest in the country.
Some analysts see this as evidence of the difficult situation on the island, whose leaders still tend to label Cuban exiles and opponents of the Castro revolution as “worms”.
Fidel Castro’s speech in 1980, when the Mariel exodus occurred and about 125,000 Cubans fled the island, is famous, in which he said that the country could do without Cubans who were dissatisfied with this process: “We don’t want it , we don’t need it.” “He said. the then President.
In 2019, a foreign investment law was passed, allowing Cubans living abroad to invest in some companies for the first time.
But despite efforts to attract potential emigrant investors, economist Elías Amor asserts: “As long as the communist regime is maintained and does not develop into a system of freedoms and democracy, I believe that no Cuban from the diaspora, including me, we .” will have the slightest interest in investing absolutely nothing. Your properties can be expropriated at any time, they can take your money from the bank or even lock you up.”
MSME and silent privatization
In 2021, Cuba announced new laws regulating micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (mipymes), and an official took to Twitter to highlight the “new opportunity for greater participation by Cubans living abroad in socio-economic development projects in Cuba.”
“Since the Barack Obama years, this call has gradually been raised. However, the memory of the counter-reform of 2016 and 2017 is still fresh in many’s minds. “The revival of small businesses is a policy at odds with the Joe Biden administration’s diplomatic normalization, which strikes me as wrong,” claims Rojas.
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Despite the fact that 7,900 MSMEs were admitted in the year and a half that they were admitted, Minister Gil stressed that the island’s socialist model is based on state-owned enterprises and industries, noting that 285 losses were recorded.
“In reality, these mipymes are nothing more than a privilege. They are destined for a sector devoted to the regime and they are the ones making those profits, not the Cuban people. These companies will not solve the problem.” Cuba, because there are only about 8,000 there. Before 1959 there were 62,000 local businesses and you can’t compete with that,” says the poet Tellez.
As he strolls the empty streets of Jaimanitas and sees the sea that has taken many of his friends away, Tellez says it’s inevitable to remember past crises like “El Maleconazo,” when the communist authorities amid social discontent and protests seemed to suffer. from 1994. “Our history is summed up in the crises and difficulties, not in the achievements,” he says.
In his verses, the writer recalls the crisis of the mid-1990s, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, which seems more relevant than ever: “Something happened not far from home that they called El Maleconazo./Centro Habana was a cauldron.” with a boiling pig in it./ The happiness of this country was at stake/ but happiness never returned/ or it never was/ or it was/ but they shot it.