Cuba’s dilemma: Reform and overcome the crisis or collapse
First published in Spanish at La Joven Cuba. Translation by LINKS International Journal of Socialist Renewal.
There is no doubt that Cuba is facing one of the most perilous, if not the most perilous, crossroads in its history. The future of the nation as we know it, with all its virtues and flaws, its strengths and weaknesses, is at stake.
After what happened in Caracas on January 3 and the publication of United States President Donald Trump’s Executive Order on January 19, the traditional enemies of the Cuban nation hope to achieve their goals more forcibly than ever before.
Taking advantage of the current critical situation in Cuba, the US government is trying to wipe the slate clean of the past 67 years of Cuban history.
If that were to happen, we Cubans would lose all possibility of self-determination. The centuries-old emancipatory aspirations of our most eminent heroes would collapse. Cuba would never again be the nation that José Martí, Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, Ignacio Agramonte, Ana Betancourt, Mariana Grajales, Antonio Maceo, Gómez, Marta Abreu, Julio Antonio Mella, Antonio Guiteras, etc dreamed of.
Meanwhile, the country is experiencing a polycrisis resulting from the confluence of two distinct but linked phenomena. On the one hand Cuba has faced 64 years of economic warfare unleashed by the US in 1962, following the logic set out in the Mallory Memorandum of April 1960 that applying economic sanctions against the Cuban people would produce “hunger, desperation, and the overthrow of the government,” On the other hand, over the past eight years the Cuban government’s economic policies have been beset by various deficiencies and shortcomings.
Unfortunately, as in other stages of Cuba’s history, some compatriots support the hostile US policy toward our nation in the mistaken belief that our salvation and well-being lie in accepting subordination to a foreign state.
They forget all of Martí’s warnings and Cuba’s 57 years of submission to the United States. That subordination did not turn us into a prosperous country, notwithstanding the effort to promote visions of a luminous Havana that contrasted with the poverty and inequality in the rest of the country.
Other compatriots are so overwhelmed by the difficulties of recent years that they go so far as to deny the real achievements of the revolutionary project in its first stage. Their reasoning is naive: “The Americans need to come and fix this.”
Every day we hear that fateful phrase more and more often in our cities’ streets.
Finally, as often happens in other countries and contexts, other compatriots cling to a past that is not going to return. They go so far as to oppose an axiom that Fidel Castro himself defended: that we must change everything that needs to be changed.
The convergence of these three trends condemns the country to something Raúl Castro warned us about more than 15 years ago. If we do not fix our own mistakes we will plunge into an abyss. In other words, the inevitable collapse.
In his media address on February 5, President Miguel Díaz-Canel referred to some specific changes, but avoided discussing comprehensive reforms. The representative of the Cuban state used the word “change” four times, referring to issues such as the basic food basket, the import-dependent mentality, the energy matrix, and the way that the party exercises its leadership role. Similarly, the concept of “transformation” was used only five times, also for specific topics: the digital transformation of the country and the development of artificial intelligence (with the country practically without electricity), making the state apparatus more economically sustainable, municipal autonomy, encouraging Cubans living abroad to participate in the country’s development, and the energy transition.
However, at a time when more than ever the country clearly needs far-reaching economic reform and the start of a gradual political reform that makes the system of relations between citizens and the state more efficient and responsive, it is striking that the top leader of the party and the government himself has not addressed the need for reform, an extremely relevant issue in such a critical moment.
This issue has been on the national agenda ever since Fidel Castro himself launched a series of substantive changes in the 1990s by: legalising foreign currency holdings; opening the country to foreign investment; expanding self-employment; and authorising the creation of Basic Units of Agricultural Production.
On the political front, the Revolution’s leader proposed and promoted the 1992 Constitution reform. This included an electoral transformation. Previously, National Assembly of People’s Power representatives had been indirectly selected by Provincial Assembly delegates. The reform set in motion a process whereby Cuban citizens ratified the mandates of those who had been selected.
Subsequently, during his first terms as president, Raúl Castro promoted another wave of reforms, including one that had a political character and was extremely important to Cuban citizens. In 2013, breaking with years of restrictive practices, a new immigration law was adopted.
The struggle between supporters and opponents of reforms that is taking place in Cuba today has been bluntly addressed in these pages by my young colleague Rubén Padrón Garriga. In his video “The Counter-Reform” he points out that to refuse to make necessary changes “is to condemn the people to misery.”
Reforms and the current national and international context
The current national and international context is extremely serious. It demonstrates something about which there can be no confusion — the most serious contradiction that we face, as was the case in other historic stages, is the contradiction between the imperial ambitions of certain circles of power in the US and the Cuban people’s desires to have a homeland that is free and sovereign, prosperous and democratic, and just and equitable.
The Trump administration — in which Marco Rubio, a figure consumed by an innate and perverse hatred, plays a decisive role — is prepared to do anything, even military aggression, to achieve the longed-for dream of “regime change”.
For Rubio, his collaborators and a growing number of Cuban emigrants, “regime change” amounts to an unconditional surrender, not only of the government, but also of the Cuban people living on the island.
If Cuba “collapses,” as is widely believed to be inevitable, we would all be subject to US rule. It would be naive to think otherwise.
Trump himself has hinted at what could be done in Cuba and who he is most interested in supporting: “dismantling” the country to provoke a rupture in the national political process for the benefit of the Cubans who make up the majority of the diaspora in the US.
Of course, any promise from Trump is highly uncertain. Just look at the way Cubans are being treated, even those who voted for him in 2024. There are increasing arrests, deportations, and mistreatment, even of those who are already citizens.
Cubans residing in the neighbouring country to the north who supported Trump and Rubio a year ago should reflect on this before continuing to call for an invasion, a naval blockade of oil imports, or a military action of some other kind.
Trump, Rubio and a growing number of Cuban Americans are also convinced that, because of the shortcomings and errors of the Cuban government, the necessary conditions have been created to bring about the “collapse” of Cuba, its economy, and its government. President Trump’s Executive Order is clearly designed to provoke that collapse through energy strangulation. This constitutes an act of war against an entire people who pose no threat to the US.
Therefore, the challenge for Cuba and for Cubans who live here is obvious. It is impossible to remove the blockade or even to soften it. We must overcome it with effective economic policies that transcend our external dependence.
However, one must add another extremely important contradiction to the contradiction that exists between the Cuban people and the imperialist power circles within the US. That is the contradiction that exists within Cuban society between, on the one hand, those who govern the country, and on the other, the citizens who aspire to well-being and prosperity and do not view their rulers as decision-makers who are capable of making the necessary changes.
Those Cubans inside and outside Cuba who believe the issue can be resolved with a complete break and the removal from power of all those currently in government would do well to reflect on what is happening and what could happen, based on what has occurred in other countries that the US has occupied and dominated. Along with the current government there would be an attempt to erase all the positive aspects of the revolutionary process in its early years (universal access to healthcare and education, easier access to housing, etc).
They would impose a “Made in Miami” government on us, one that would only answer to the interests of the US and the Cuban-American right wing in Miami. The result would not be a “first-world capitalism” but something similar to what has happened in other countries that are subservient to Washington. We would wind up with an extractivist system whose benefits would go to foreign companies exploiting our resources, not the Cuban people. The differences between Washington, DC, and San Juan, Puerto Rico are quite striking.
And what about democracy and human rights? Trump has already shown that he does not care about them. And not just in Cuba or Venezuela. He wants to annex Canada and Greenland without consulting their citizens in the slightest.
Resolving the crisis by intensifying the path of reform
Therefore, the only path forward for us Cubans who live on the island is to do everything that we can to ensure the Cuban economy, which has been declining for several years, recovers and begins to develop so that our citizens can enjoy the decent life they so rightfully deserve. And that depends exclusively on the highest authorities in the country. Not on the provinces, not on the municipalities, and not on the average Cuban.
The demand for reforms, which is primarily economic but also political, is a natural consequence of the times that we are living in. This is especially true when we see on the National Television News that our leaders, with a few exceptions, continue to repeat the old formulas. Not only do they refuse to change, they also refuse to clearly recognise the numerous mistakes that they have made.
The statistics are compelling. The country’s GDP, volume of exports, and productivity continue to decline, while social indicators such as infant mortality and the average age of the population continue to rise due to low fertility and the growing emigration of young people of working age.
Against the backdrop of these two contradictions, Cuba is embroiled in a bitter struggle between those who, as citizens and even as rank-and-file party members, consider that it is essential to deepen the process of reforms, and those in power who are postponing changing everything that needs to be changed, hiding behind the slogan of “we are continuity.” The latter group have held sway and maintained control of power, including the mass media.
In these cases, those who defend the status quo often take advantage of the supremacy of their antiquated speech in state media, particularly television.
They reject and stigmatise anyone who thinks differently and proposes changing everything that needs changing. They defame and vilify them with the most implausible accusations. The tone of these assertions is harsh, sectarian and oppressive.
There is nothing new in these accusations. They have been seen before, such as in 2016 when, for example, a campaign was waged against so-called “centrism”.
But now there is an additional problem. It is the critical nature of the moment. These are not times for division, but for unity and growth. These are not times to plot against patriotic Cubans simply because they hold a different opinion.
The solid arguments of Cuban specialists with the highest national and international prestige on the need for reforms are being met with arguments that are difficult to sustain in serious academic debate.
As on other occasions, regarding the specific issue of reforms, the essay “Reform or Revolution” by the courageous German-Polish leader Rosa Luxemburg is being cited out of context. It is superficial to argue that this debate can be generalised beyond its specific content, as if our current situation were the same as the specific dilemma that was addressed in that text, which resulted from the internal debate within German social democracy in the last decade of the 19th century.
As is well known, that debate concerned the Erfurt Program and the best strategy for overthrowing capitalism and building socialism in Germany. In other words, the discussion centred on the best strategy for a socialist or social-democratic party to take power and on the radical nature of the path that such a party should follow once in power to overcome capitalism.
But Luxemburg’s oft-cited conclusions have nothing to do with our specific situation and debate today, namely whether the current Cuban socialist system needs reforms. The aim is to come up with proposals to change everything that needs to be changed so that Cuban socialism can achieve its intended goal: a prosperous, sustainable, just and equitable society.
It is clear that the current policies have not been successful in this regard.
A better approach to the meaning of reforms within a socialist system may be that of Atilio Borón, an academic who is well known in Cuba. In 2008, referring specifically to the Cuban and Venezuelan experiences within the concept of 21st century socialism, he stated that:
The absurdity of anathematising any reform as a heresy or a betrayal of socialism — understood as an unalterable dogma not only in terms of principles, which is correct, but also in terms of historical projects, which is wrong — is obvious, because it would mean the consecration of a suicidal immobility, the denial of the capacity for self-correction of errors and a renunciation of collective learning, conditions that are essential for the permanent improvement of socialism.
What has damaged the Cuban economy most is not the reform approved 15 years ago, as its opponents argue, but rather the failure to have applied it consistently and deliberately. There are many examples: the inexplicable delay in implementing the “re-ordering”, that is, the monetary and exchange rate unification, which was originally scheduled for 2016 but postponed until 2020, or the current surprising delay in adopting a law governing businesses, to name just two.
Cuban academics from different generations and professions have been active, subjecting the country’s reality to serious and objective analysis. They do so without resorting to slogans or subterfuges that attempt to sugarcoat the multifaceted crisis that we have been experiencing. They have been doing this in institutional spaces, such as the Economic Society of Friends of the Country, the Centre for Studies of the Cuban Economy, and the “Last Thursdays” forums organised by the Temas journal. They have been presenting their analyses publicly, in full view of the citizenry.
Acting in this way, they have been fulfilling an obligation that Julio Carranza explained more than 18 years ago:
Scientists and scientific institutions have a public service responsibility. This consists of communicating specialised information and analysis directly to society; not as a political proposal, but as well-founded interpretations that contribute to raising the cultural level and to general knowledge on different subjects.
Among the opponents of reform, an ossified view of orthodox Marxism prevails. This view predominated in the Soviet Union for more than 60 years and prevented timely reforms. As a result, by the time the proponents of reform finally managed to move in that direction, starting in 1985, it was too late. The economic stagnation resulting from the ossification and sclerosis of Marxist thought had undermined the foundations of socialism in the Soviet Union.
The paths taken by the People’s Republic of China and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam were quite different. In both countries reformist factions within their respective Communist parties succeeded in implementing transformations that opened their economies to the realities of the market. The evidence of the success of their reforms is obvious. In both countries there was no hesitation in undertaking reforms with the utmost seriousness and depth. In both countries the people now enjoy the benefits of prosperous and resilient economies.
Cuba must find the road toward its own reforms. Otherwise, all of us will run the risk of suffering an unacceptable setback that we do not deserve after so much sacrifice.
Carlos Alzugaray Treto is a former senior Cuban diplomat and professor. Now retired, he is a co-coordinator of La Joven Cuba's Advisory Board.
