In tribute to the Cuban Revolution
Sixty-six years of socialist construction
Sixty-six years ago, in the early morning hours of January 1, 1959, the U.S.-backed Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista fled Cuba, setting the stage for the peaceful occupation of Santiago de Cuba on January 1 by the rebel column led by Fidel Castro; the formation of a Provisional Revolutionary Government on January 1-2; and the triumphant movement of the revolutionary leadership across the island in a “Caravan of Freedom,” which arrived in Havana on January 8. The triumph of the Cuban Revolution was an exemplary event, which indicated the real possibility for the transformation of the neocolonial situation by the people.
I today commemorate the event with an edited synthesis of two previous commentaries: “In commemoration of the Cuban Revolution: The sixty-fourth anniversary of its triumph on January 1, 1959,” January 1, 2023; and “Cuban President explains economic crisis: Chronicle of a blockade intensified and an arbitrary list,” May 17, 2024.
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In previous columns, I have tried to describe the characteristics of neocolonialism, illustrating the phenomenon with the case of Cuba (“From colonialism to neocolonialism,” June 15, 2021; “Neocolonialism and Cuba: The structures of a neocolonial republic,” June 18, 2021). I begin today’s commentary by emphasizing that Fidel Castro, whose revolutionary consciousness was formed in the context of the Cuban neocolonial situation and the Cuban and Latin American anti-imperialist struggle, understood the essential characteristics of the Cuban neocolonial situation and the necessary steps for the attainment of true sovereignty. Thus Fidel, who functioned as the maximum leader of the revolution beginning with the Moncada attack of July 26, 1953, led the revolution to its consolidation on an anti-neocolonial foundation.
Fidel from the outset understood socialism to be an integral and necessary component of the Cuban attainment of sovereignty. But Fidel’s Marxism-Leninism was flexible and unorthodox rather than doctrinaire; and his concept of socialism was pragmatically adapted to the ongoing struggle in practice for Cuban sovereignty.
Like other exceptional leaders of Third World revolutions, Fidel combined theoretical understanding with a capacity for connecting to, leading, and teaching the people. He identified problems concretely, in down-to-earth terminology, without embarking on a theoretical discourse. When he explained the historic and economic sources of social problems, he did so precisely and succinctly. When he put forth proposals that required somewhat longer explanation, he explained the matter in clear terms.
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The Moncada Program
Fidel first conceived a revolutionary plan in 1951, prior to the March 10, 1952, Batista coup d’état. Fidel envisaged the revolutionary goal as the taking of power from a corrupt political class by the most committed and courageous of the nation’s youth, with the intention of exercising power in defense of the interests of the people from which they sprang. In Fidel’s understanding, the problem of Cuba was greater than the dictatorship. Nevertheless, when the crimes of the dictator became a part of Cuban reality, Fidel did not hesitate to denounce the tyranny, the torturing, and the assassinations of the dictatorship, invoking the principles of the continually evolving social and ethical consciousness of Cuba and of humanity.
In Fidel’s mind, the necessary revolution in Cuba had to be based in a synthesis of the ideas of José Martí, the late nineteenth century Cuban revolutionary, and the ideas of Marxism-Leninism. He had studied the works of Marx, Engels, and Lenin on his own, during his last two years at the University of Havana, using the library of the first Communist Party of Cuba. This study enabled him to discern more fully the political immaturity of the Cuban people. He arrived to see the Cuban people as a great, healthy, non-conforming rebellious mass that did not have mature political consciousness. He saw the people as a force capable of carrying out the revolution, but due to their political immaturity, they must be brought to the revolution in stages. The first stage consisted in the dissemination of a discourse that focused on the taking of power through armed struggle and on implementing, once in power, concrete solutions to social problems. In a second stage, Marxist-Leninist political education would be introduced, explaining to the people that the steps taken in the concrete resolution of the nation’s problems are actually the first steps on the road to socialism.
Therefore, when Fidel called the people to revolution in 1953, he called upon the people to continue the unfinished Cuban revolution, which now, he declared, was entering a new stage of war. It was a single revolution, Fidel maintained, that was initiated by Carlos Manuel de Céspedes in 1868, when he declared the independence of Cuba and the liberation of his own slaves; that was continued by José Martí in the 1880s and 1890s, culminating in the second war of independence; and that was carried forward by Julio Antonia Mella, Antonio Guiteras, and Eduardo Chibás in the period of the neocolonial republic. The people knew that Mella was the founder in 1925 of the first Communist Party; that Guiteras had led an armed struggle and had declared for socialism; and that Chibás was considered the most radical of the political class of the 1950s, who denounced the political class itself for its corruption. But Mella and Guiteras were recalled by Fidel not as carriers of the socialist banner, but as heroes and martyrs of the historic Cuban struggle for independence and for a more dignified republic that responds to the needs of the people.
Fidel did not call workers to a socialist revolution. Rather, he called the people to the taking of political power from the hands of a corrupt political class that served the interests of the landholders, the large companies, and the owners of rental housing and the utilities companies; with the intention of placing political power in the hands of a revolutionary government that would adopt measures in accordance with the interests of the people and the needs of tenant farmers, agricultural workers, industrial workers, and professionals. He proposed measures with respect to concrete problems that he described in vivid terminology: pervasive unemployment in all economic sectors; wretched rural housing conditions; unsupportable urban housing rents; high electricity rates; limited electricity in the countryside; woefully inadequate nutrition, health care, and education in the countryside; low levels of land ownership among farmers; and widespread largescale landholdings.
The launching of a new stage of war in the single Cuban Revolution was proclaimed dramatically on July 26, 1953, when Fidel led an attack on the Moncada military garrison in Santiago de Cuba. The intention of the assault was to seize weapons for the launching of a guerrilla struggle in the mountains. The assault failed, and 70 of the 126 assailants were killed, 95% of them murdered after capture by Batista’s soldiers in a four-day period following the assault.
Following the failed assault, Fidel was arrested and placed in solitary confinement, and he was brought to trial in a procedure separate from his comrades, which was not open to the public. He was permitted to address the court, and his address of October 16, 1953, was delivered from memory. A written version of the address was smuggled out of his prison cell, and it subsequently was distributed clandestinely. Fidel concluded the address by saying, “History Will Absolve Me,” and the underground document—at once manifesto, political platform, and program of action—became known by that phrase.
In his October 16 address to the tribunal, Fidel described the organization and the carrying out of the assault, its intentions, the reasons for its failure, and his capture. He praised the courage and heroism of the young insurrectionists who had carried out the attack. He condemned the soldiers who had tortured and murdered those who had been captured following the assault, maintaining that they had degraded the uniform of the army; at the same time, he praised the bravery of the soldiers of the dictator who had fallen defending the barracks against the insurrection. He harshly criticized the career of Batista and his deceitful message to the people on the day following the attack. In addition, Fidel argued that the assault on the Moncada garrison was legal, inasmuch as it sought to overthrow an illegal regime and to restore the legitimate Constitution. He maintained that the right of resistance to despotism is established in the Cuban Constitution of 1940, and it has been defended by great jurists and philosophers since ancient times, a point that Fidel supported with numerous references.
In History Will Absolve Me, Fidel displays an insightful understanding of the neocolonial situation of Cuba, without naming neocolonialism as such. He describes how Cuba exports low-value raw materials, and he notes that more than half of the best agricultural land is in foreign hands. He graphically describes the resulting impoverished conditions of the people. He explains a series of measures that indeed constituted reasoned structural changes in response to the maladies of the neocolonial situation, initiating the road toward sovereignty.
Especially important in this regard, Fidel declared that, if the revolution had triumphed, the revolutionary government would have undertaken three initiatives, with the support of the people. First, the industrialization of the country, mobilizing the financial resources of the nation toward this end, reducing the purchase of weapons and military equipment. The great task of the industrialization of the country would be placed under the study, planning, and direction of competent specialists not associated with the corrupt political class. Secondly, agrarian reform, which Fidel explained as having two components: the conversion of one hundred thousand small tenant farmers into the owners of the land that they work; and the expropriation of lands beyond a determined size, both foreign and Cuban, supplemented by the stimulation of agricultural cooperatives. Thirdly, converting each urban family into the owner of its house or apartment. In addition, Fidel spoke of the need for a comprehensive reform of education, declaring teaching to be the most sacred mission of the world of today and tomorrow.
The Moncada program, as it came to be called, was a proposal that struck at the heart of the neocolonial relation: taking land from foreign interests and placing it in the hands of Cuban peasants and agricultural workers. In addition, full and equal access to education, as the foundation for scientific and industrial development, reducing the excessive dependency on sugar exportation.
Fidel was sentenced to imprisonment for fifteen years on the Isle of Pines. He and his companions were released on May 15, 1955, as a result of a popular amnesty campaign. Upon his release, Fidel was offered influential and lucrative positions in politics and journalism. He turned them down, seeking to continue with the revolution launched on July 26, 1953. The July 26 Revolutionary Movement was established on June 12, 1955; it distributed pamphlets that called the people to revolution, restating the points of the Moncada program. Fidel traveled to the United States, collecting money from small donors in the Cuban émigré community, in order to relaunch the guerrilla struggle for the taking of power. Following preparations in Mexico, the armed struggle was reinitiated in the eastern province then known as Oriente on December 2, 1956. After some time controlling the eastern mountain region known as Sierra Maestra, and following a failed Batista offensive, the guerrillas advanced to the west rapidly in 1958, culminating in the victory of rebel forces led by Che Guevara in Santa Clara, the flight of Batista, and the entry of Fidel into Santiago de Cuba on January 1, 1959.
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The decisive revolutionary steps of the early 1960s
As all the world knows or ought to know, the Moncada program was implemented by the Cuban Revolutionary Government in the period 1959 to 1961. In taking decisive steps against the neocolonial situation in defense of Cuban sovereignty, the Cuban Revolutionary Government, rather than seeking to end the Cuba-USA relation, sought to transform it into a mutually beneficial relation.
The Agrarian Reform Law of May 17, 1959, expropriated sugar and rice plantations and cattle estates in excess of 3,333 acres and real estate in excess of 1000 acres. It provided for compensation to the owners in the form of twenty-year bonds at 4.5 percent annual interest, with prices determined by the assessed value of land for tax purposes. A total of 4,423 plantations were expropriated, with approximately one-third of the acreage distributed to peasants who worked on it, who were encouraged, but not compelled, to form cooperatives; and with two-thirds of the acreage becoming state property, utilized for the establishment of cooperatives and state farms. In the state farms, the government appointed managers, and the workers formed unions and elected their leaders; managers and elected leaders managed the farms together. In the case of the cooperatives, there were comprehensive contracts with the state, which purchased agricultural products and provided technical assistance. The agrarian reform did not involve the state simply taking control of privately owned land; rather, it was a question of the management of agricultural land by the state and agricultural workers in cooperation, as was fully understood and actively supported by the workers.
On July 6, 1960, the Revolutionary Government emitted a law authorizing the President and the Prime Minister of Cuba to nationalize U.S. properties by means of joint resolutions. Like the Agrarian Reform Law of 1959, the nationalization law of 1960 established compensation, and it went further in defining the terms of compensation. The 1960 law established compensation for the nationalized properties through government bonds at 2% annual interest, with payment to begin in thirty years. Cuba was to create a fund that would be fed by deposits equal to 25% of the U.S. purchase of Cuban sugar in excess of the sugar quota. The Law, therefore, proposed a mutually beneficial resolution, linking compensation for nationalized properties to the U.S.-Cuban sugar trade. By means of a higher U.S. sugar purchase and Cuban use of the additional income to finance compensation and invest in industrial development, the July 6 nationalization law pointed to the transformation of core-peripheral exploitation into North-South cooperation.
The Cuban proposal to compensate the owners of properties through mutually beneficial trade and cooperation was rejected without negotiation or discussion by the U.S. government. On July 6, the same day that the nationalization law was emitted and the Cuban proposal was announced, the U.S. government announced a reduction of U.S. purchases below the sugar quota. Nevertheless, thirty days later, in the announcement of the first joint resolution nationalizing U.S. properties, Fidel appears to remain hopeful that the U.S. government would accept the proposal of compensation through U.S. purchases above the sugar quota. But it was not to be. The United States had already embarked on its policy of regime change through economic sanctions and the sponsoring of terrorist activities.
In order for things to play out differently, it would have been necessary for the U.S. corporate elite to adopt an enlightened response to the Cuban Revolution. In fact, the U.S. corporate sector in 1959 was economically, politically, and ideologically positioned to take an enlightened turn of accommodation to the Cuban Revolution, a fact that Fidel discerned. At that time, there were various indications that the neocolonial world-system was not going to be politically or ecologically sustainable. The national liberation movements of Africa and Asia were in the midst of sustained drives for political independence from European colonial rule, and the radical character of some of the revolutionary leaders as well as the cases of Vietnam and Cuba demonstrated that the newly independent nations were not going to accept the limited sovereignty that the colonial powers were conceding. Moreover, it was patently evident that the world-system was reaching the geographical limits of the earth, and that its historic method of expanding economically by conquering new lands and peoples had reached its natural limits.
Indeed, Franklin D. Roosevelt had seen the need for a transition to a form of neocolonialism that itself would evolve step-by-step toward a more genuine form of equality. Fidel in 1960 was proposing a first step in that direction, converting the U.S.-Cuban sugar trade into the source of compensation for U.S. properties, and the source of a fund for Cuban industrial and scientific development. This would have enabled Cuba to become a more equal trading partner with the United States, transforming the exploitative neocolonial relation between Cuba and the United States into a mutually beneficial trade relation on the foundation of the principles of the equality and sovereignty of nations. If the neocolonial hegemonic power had taken this step, thereby demonstrating the advantages of cooperation, it would have been an example for others, leading the world-system beyond its colonial foundation.
However, the U.S. corporate sector in 1960 did not have sufficient historical and political consciousness to see that Fidel’s proposal was consistent with its long-term interest in a politically stable world-system. Not discerning the wisdom of Fidel, the U.S. political establishment continued on the road that had been taken by the Truman administration, defined by a permanent war economy and the military industrial complex, with military bases everywhere ready to support accommodationist governments that were oriented to the repression of popular movements in the neocolonies of the world.
With respect to Cuban national industry, the Revolution did not plan nationalization in 1959. It planned a dynamic industrial, scientific, and commercial development, and it saw the national industrial bourgeoisie as possibly playing a vital role in the development project. Accordingly, it included representatives of the national bourgeoisie in the initial Council of Ministers, and Fidel exhorted the national bourgeoisie to patriotic participation in the Cuban revolutionary project.
However, the Cuban industrial bourgeoisie was unable to transform itself from a figurehead bourgeoisie effectively directed by U.S. capital to an independent national bourgeoisie allied with a popular revolutionary project. The members of the national industrial bourgeoisie increasingly emigrated, abandoned management of their companies, sabotaged production, and/or participated in criminal counterrevolutionary activities. In response, the Revolutionary Government took measures that the circumstances required. On October 13 and October 14, 1960, more than twenty-one months after the triumph of the Revolution, the government authorized the nationalization, with compensation, of Cuban-owned properties in big industry, commerce, banking, and housing. By mid-1961, virtually all the big industrialists had left the country. Further nationalizations were implemented from June 30, 1961, to July 27, 1962, thus completing the liquidation of the national bourgeoisie as a class and the incorporation of big industry and commerce into the structures of the Cuban state.
In the aftermath of the triumph of the Revolution, with overwhelming popular support for the Revolution internally, and with powerful external enemies, the Revolution took steps to develop alternative political structures that could ensure the political power of the people. In 1960, Committees for the Defense of the Revolution were formed in all neighborhoods, for the purpose of vigilance over sabotage and terrorist activities. At the same time, revolutionary leaders from the ranks took control of the Federation of Cuban Workers and the Federation of University Students, previously controlled by leaders tied to the neocolonial order, and they expanded their numbers. In 1961, small farmers were organized into the National Organization of Small Agriculturalists, and the Federation of Cuban Women was formed. These mass organizations of workers, students, women, farmers, and neighbors provided structures for the active participation of the people in the forging of the revolutionary project.
In addition, mass assemblies emerged as an important element of popular participation in the unfolding revolutionary process. One such mass assembly was the National General Assembly of the People of Cuba. On September 2, 1960, the Assembly emitted the Declaration of Havana, which defined the concepts and rights that would guide the revolutionary process in the subsequent stage. The National General Assembly of the People of Cuba was constituted by a mass meeting of one million persons, perhaps 20% of the Cuban adult population of the time. Fidel considered that the structures of mass organizations and mass assemblies constituted in embryo an alternative system of “direct democracy” or “real democracy,” in which the government is united to the people and seeks to provide for the social and economic needs of the people.
The revolutionary project was being led by a person with an exceptional capacity to analyze national and international affairs, to discern politically intelligent solutions to problems, and to forge the necessary unity of the people. As early as 1961, Fidel was speaking of the importance of replacing leadership by one person with the collective leadership of a vanguard political party. During that year, attempts were made to form a vanguard political party through the unification of the three principal revolutionary organizations, which were the July 26 Movement (established and led by Fidel), the March 13 Revolutionary Directory (initially a revolutionary student organization), and the Popular Socialist Party (the first Communist Party of Cuba). After some problems, these efforts eventually culminated in the formation in 1965 of a new Communist Party of Cuba. Its function was to educate and guide the people, becoming a collective teaching authority in the eyes of the people, eventually replacing the charismatic authority of Fidel.
Thus, in the early 1960s, basic structures of an alternative political practice were emerging, consisting of popular participation in mass organizations and mass assemblies and the formation of a vanguard political party that has the duty of educating the people. The emerging conception was that of a united leadership that possesses a commitment to defend the rights of the majority, and as a result of this commitment, is liberated from the distorted understandings that have roots in particular interests. The leadership seeks to educate the people, freeing them from the ideological distortions that are disseminated throughout the world. At the same time, it is the people who have political power, inasmuch as the people are organized in various mass organizations, and they are acquiring ideological clarity and consensus.
The political practices of the 1960s became the foundation for alternative structures of people’s democracy, which were institutionalized in the Cuban Constitution of 1976. The 1976 Constitution concentrates political power in the hands of the elected deputies of the people. It establishes a National Assembly that is the highest authority of the nation, with the power to enact laws and designate the high members of the executive and judicial branches of government. The deputies of the National Assembly are elected by the delegates of the municipal assemblies of the nation, which have been elected through direct and secret vote, in which voters choose from two or more candidates. These direct elections by the people of the delegates of the municipal assemblies occur in small voting districts, in which the candidates are known by the people, because of their work in mass organizations or other institutions in the community. Accordingly, electoral campaigns do not occur, and instead, brief biographies are displayed in public places.
The mass organizations established in the early 1960s remain integral to the political process. Among other functions, they play a central role in the second-degree elections for the National Assembly and the executive branch. They designate members of candidacy commissions, which propose lists of candidates to the delegates of the municipal assemblies and the deputies of the National Assembly, when the assemblies carry out their electoral functions.
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The intensified blockade and its consequences
Cubans who lived during the 1970s and 1980s often consider that Cuba during that period was a paradise. However, things came crashing down in the early 1990s, in the immediate aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Soviet-led Eastern European socialist bloc, with which Cuba had extensive trade relations. Cuba, nevertheless, persisted in its project of socialist construction, greatly expanding tourism with the support of highly regulated Canadian and European investments, and expanding space for private enterprises under strict controls. As expressed at the time, it was a process of reintegration into the capitalist world-economy on a base of socialist values. The adjustment policies enabled a slow but nonetheless persistent and definitive recovery.
By the beginning of the twenty-first century, Cuba had reestablished its relations with Latin America and the Caribbean, which had been severed under U.S. pressure in the early 1960s. In this period, Cuba played a leading role in the process of Latin American and Caribbean union and integration, which reached its zenith around 2014. Parallel processes emerged in East Asia and the Middle East, with China playing a leading role. BRICS reproduced these developments on a global scale, with China and Russia playing leading roles. These dynamics constituted a step-by-step construction of an alternative multipolar world order that respects the sovereignty of nations,
In response, the United States launched its new strategy of unconventional war, beginning in the last two years of the second Obama administration. Unconventional war involves economic blockades and sanctions, ideological manipulation through international media, and financial support for opposition tendencies, real or fabricated. In Cuba, the unconventional war arrived in the form of the implementation of 243 measures of the Trump administration, designed to intensify the blockade that had been in place since 1960. The measures seriously affected the Cuban economy, reaching their highest moment of impact in 2024.
On May 14, 2024, Spanish professor and journalist Ignacio Ramonet interviewed Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel. Ramonet began the two-hour interview by noting that in Cuba today there are food hardships, inflation, and inadequacies in public services. He asked why, if the U.S. blockade of Cuba has been in place for six decades, such difficulties emerge in recent times. Diaz-Canel explained that in recent times there has been an intensification of the blockade supported by the inclusion of Cuba on a spurious list of countries that supposedly support terrorism, such that today the blockade has qualitatively different characteristics.
Díaz-Canel reported that Cuba up to the first half of 2019 had suffered from the limitations and adverse consequences of the blockade that had been in place for six decades, and therefore, its level of development was much lower than it would have been without the blockade. However, Cuba had developed a capacity for resisting the blockade, which enabled the country to advance in development to a certain degree. Cuba up to 2019 had a determined level of economic activity, exportation, and support for social programs of high impact for the population. Up to 2019, the country received income from the exportation of products that were competitive in the international market, reflecting the vitality of economic activities in the country. And Cuba had income from tourism—the number of international tourists in the country had reached four and one-half million. In addition, Cuba received an important quantity of foreign currency from remittances from Cuban citizens living abroad and Cuban families in other countries. Moreover, Cuba had programs of credit through a variety of financial institutions and governments with which the Cuban government had good relations, which included development projects. During the period prior to 2019, Cuba also had a stable supply of fuel as a result of agreements with sister countries, which included the providing of medical services as a form of payment, reducing the amount of foreign currency paid for fuel.
Therefore, “under such conditions, we had sufficient foreign currency income to permit the importation of raw materials that were necessary for our principal productive processes, to the extent possible with the limitations of the blockade. We were able to buy food to supply the basic food basket [provided to each Cuban family at highly subsidized prices], and we even were able to buy food that we sold in state stores, either in the stores with transactions in the Cuban convertible peso in use at that time or in the national money stores. Thus, our national market had a determined level of supply.” We had sufficient foreign currency to attain a legal currency exchange controlled by the state, which enabled us to buy and sell foreign currencies with an equivalent amount of national money. We had an acceptable capacity to pay our debt obligations with countries or companies that had invested in Cuba. And we had a level of money that enabled us to buy necessary parts for the maintenance of our transportation and energy systems and to buy the inputs necessary for our productive processes.
All of this meant that Cuba had a low rate of inflation. “We arrived to a situation, I would say, of stability, although still not attaining the prosperity to which we aspired.” This was the situation up to the second half of 2019.
During the second half of 2019, Díaz-Canel emphasized, the Trump Administration applied more than 240 measures involving the intensification of the blockade, introducing a new concept of blockade, that of a blockade intensified. This included the application of Title III of the Helms-Burton Law, which never before had been applied. This had a tremendous impact, because it enabled pressure on foreign investors, present and future foreign investors, since Title III gives support to all those who seek compensation for confiscations that had been undertaken with full justice by the Revolutionary Government in the first years of the Revolution. [Title III permits U.S. citizens or entities whose property was confiscated or nationalized by the Cuban government to file suit in U.S. courts against companies in third countries that have engaged in commercial activities related to said properties].
Díaz-Canel reported that “with these intensification measures, all our sources of foreign exchange income were cut off.” International tourism declined notably, inasmuch as the new measures eliminated the looser restrictions of the Obama administration on the right of the North American people to travel to Cuba. Cruise ships, which had become an important part of the influx of tourists to Cuba, were eliminated. Remittances were reduced.
In addition, “an enormous energetical and financial persecution was organized.” Some 92 banks or international financial entities have ceased their relations of financial interchange with Cuba, as a result of sanctions or pressures applied by the government of the United States. Moreover, they have applied pressure and have sanctioned friendly and sister nations that had provided a stable supply of fuel to Cuba. Therefore, Cuba began to experience a deficit in fuel and a deficit in the availability of foreign currency.
The deficits in fuel and foreign currency have destabilized the national electric energy system. The President explained that Cuba is able to ensure the functioning of the thermoelectric system with Cuban national crude oil. But these thermoelectric power plants do not cover the national demand for electricity, especially in moments of high demand, so the country must put into operation other generating plants that run mainly on diesel and refined oil. When the country does not have these fuels, a deficit in the generation of electricity occurs.
In addition, having less foreign currency available, the country is not able to buy in sufficient time the parts necessary for the maintenance of the national electric system, which is a system with a certain level of technological obsolescence. In these conditions, annoying blackouts occur. With respect to the issue of parts and maintenance, the President noted that Cuban crude oil is a heavy, high-sulfur oil, the use of which generates the need for a higher-than-normal level of systematic maintenance.
In order to diminish the blackouts, Díaz-Canel explained, the government is obligated to close or limit somewhat the productive activities of the economy. In general, as a result of limitations in foreign currency, the country began to lack certain inputs and raw materials necessary for important production processes. These dynamics were unfolding in the context of the multidimensional crisis of the world, which has included the rise of prices in the international market.
As a result of these factors, a very complex situation has emerged, characterized by shortages in medicines, food and fuel, and difficulties in transportation. “We cannot develop economic activities with all the intensity and capabilities that we possess to supply goods and services; so a tremendous imbalance is created between supply and demand, resulting in price increases and a high level of inflation.” And since the government does not have sufficient foreign currency available to operate a regulated currency exchange, an illegal and parallel black market in currencies emerges.
In addition, with many banks and financial institutions ceasing to give credit, the government does not have the same capacity to attain time to cover and honor its commitments. With the money that comes this week, priorities have to be decided upon, the President noted.
The Cuban President observed that Cuba plans to overcome the energy crisis through renewable energy sources, primarily photovoltaic, because it can be assembled in less time. Cuba is now beginning to mount and put into operation photovoltaic energy parks for the generation of electricity. Cuba already has signed a group of agreements that are going to account for 2,000 megawatts, which is going to place the country in a different situation with respect to energy in less than two years. Cuba plans to have 20-25% renewable energy by the year 2030. All of this has been well defined and programmed.
With the turn to renewable energy as a partial source of the nation’s electricity within two years, Cuba is going to consume less fuel in the generation of electricity, which means that the country will have more fuel available for the production of food, for agriculture, and for national productive processes, which today are very limited by the fact that most of the available fuel goes to generate electricity. And it will mean reduction of Cuba’s costs for the importation of fuel.
The Cuban President stressed that the Cuban government gives a high priority to stimulating national production in agriculture and food, with emphasis on local production. Each of the municipal territories and provinces has a program of food self-sufficiency, providing the foundation for the food sovereignty of the nation. Since January, the members of the government have been visiting and inspecting places of work throughout the country. Díaz-Canel reported that the governmental visiting teams have observed collectives of workers, with the leaders that they have, who are doing things in a different manner, taking into account the conditions created by the intensified blockade.
Increasing national production, among other benefits, will make possible control of inflation and of the currency exchange market. Cuba has a long-term program, Díaz-Canel noted, for the attainment of macroeconomic equilibrium by the year 2030.
In addition, Cuba stresses science and innovation, with the conviction that the responses to the problems will find solutions through scientific innovation. The importance of science in Cuba is rooted in the vision of Fidel, who created a network of scientific research centers, which now has become “a powerful closed-loop business system for the production of medicines, and in particular biotechnological medicines.”
At the present time, Cuba is expanding its use of digital technologies to facilitate communication between the government and the people and to improve efficiency in the delivery of services to the people. Digital transformation and artificial intelligence can be important not only in public administration, but also in improving the efficiency of the productive processes. These processes are being developed with attention to cybersecurity, in order to avoid cybernetic attacks; and they include the use of applications and equipment that have been developed entirely by Cubans, especially Cuban youth.
The Cuban model for social and economic development, Díaz-Canel explains, is that of a planned economy that takes into account the signals of the market. It is not a pure market economy. It includes a concept of social justice, such that the laws of the market are not the laws that drive economic development. Cuba has a planned economy that recognizes and takes into account the signals of the market and the laws of the market.
Cuba since 2012 has stimulated the development of small and medium enterprises, both state owned and private. The private sector always has existed in Cuba, Díaz-Canel notes, but recently it has been amplified. An important part of agricultural and animal production is in the hands of cooperatives and private farmers; and some independent workers in trades and occupations have converted themselves into small enterprises.
Díaz-Canel stresses that the state enterprises ought to play the fundamental role in socialist construction, but complemented by the economic activity of the private sector. In the Cuban concept of socialist construction, the principle means of production are in the hands of the state, represented by the state companies. There are in Cuba approximately 10,000 small private enterprises, but the great weight of the economy is in the state sector, although the non-state sector is important.
Díaz-Canel noted that the recent expansion in the number of small private enterprises has occurred without sufficient integration between state and non-state enterprises. Therefore, a priority at the present time is to strengthen the integration between the state and private sectors, such that the non-state entities contribute to and are included in the National Economic and Social Development Plan. Cuba is now developing norms in this regard.
Díaz-Canel observes that the U.S. government has had the intention of trying to convert the non-state sector into the social base of opposition to the Revolution. In Cuba, however, the small and medium private enterprises are seen as a business fabric necessary to continue advancing in socialist construction in accordance with the national development plan.
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The future of the Cuba-USA relation
Inasmuch as the U.S. government under both major political parties has maintained the blockade with the support of the U.S. military-industrial complex, Díaz-Canel does not believe that the policy will change. “My conviction is that we have to overcome the blockade by ourselves, with our ability, with our work, with our talent, with our intelligence and with our effort.”
Nonetheless, Cuba remains disposed to sit at a table of dialogue under equality of conditions, without impositions or preconditions, to speak of all issues pertaining to Cuban-US relations. Díaz-Canel emphasizes that Cuba has taken no action against the United States, whereas the blockade is unilaterally imposed against Cuba by the United States. The end of the blockade “is simply a right of the Cuban people, a right to develop in an environment of peace and equality, without coercive measures or impositions.” He maintains that Cuba and the USA are always going to have ideological differences, but a “civilized relation between neighbors” would be possible, characterized by “cooperation and economic, commercial, scientific, financial, and cultural interchanges in all areas of life. It could be a normal relation.”
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