Cuba’s communist model needs “urgent changes” to overcome a major crisis which cannot be blamed solely on a crippling US oil blockade, President Miguel Díaz-Canel said in his frankest admission yet of the need for radical reforms.
While Havana’s impulse has been to blame its problems on a more-than-six-decade US trade embargo and more recent blockade, Díaz-Canel admitted in remarks broadcast on Thursday there were “obstacles that don’t come from outside, nor the blockade.”
He called out “slowness, bureaucracy and norms that impede those who want to produce” as well as “decisions that we have put off” for contributing to the worst crisis in living memory.
“The situation calls for urgent and necessary changes,” he told the Communist Party Central Committee.
Díaz-Canel was speaking at a party meeting convened hastily to fast-track reforms aimed at boosting the private sector and attracting investment from millions of Cubans who have fled abroad.
The measures are part of an eleventh-hour bid to stave off economic collapse in the face of unprecedented US pressure.
They are expected to be approved by the National Assembly, which rubber-stamps legislation, later Thursday after being endorsed by the Communist Party.
‘Backs against the wall’
Few details of the changes have been forthcoming but Díaz-Canel cited China and Vietnam as possible models for opening Cuba’s economy to the world six decades after the overthrow of a US-backed dictator and embrace of communism.
“Their backs are up against the wall as never before,” Michael Bustamante, Cuban Studies Chair at the University of Miami, told the AFP news agency.
“They’re in the uncomfortable position of making changes to their economic model, seemingly because of the pressure that’s being exerted on them by the United States.”
The oil blockade imposed by President Donald Trump in January has brought the island’s already moribund economy to the brink of collapse, marked by power cuts sometimes lasting over 30 hours and shortages of food, fuel, drinking water and medicine.
Díaz-Canel appeared to anticipate resistance from Communist hardliners.
Some of the reforms “will not have absolute consensus but cannot be postponed,” he said.
But “when people’s lives become this hard,” the government has a responsibility to “change what needs to be changed” rather than try to explain away the crisis, he argued.
It is unclear, however, whether the changes will satisfy Trump, who is pushing for a change in Cuba’s leaders as well as its economic model.
The Republican leader has floated a “friendly takeover” of Cuba and joked about making a “stop over” there after ending his war with Iran.
Asked on Thursday if Cuba was now in Trump’s sights after he signed a deal to end the Iran war, Vice-President JD Vance said Washington wanted Cubans to be “happy and successful.”
“We’re actually talking to the Cuban government right now about how they could change their ways to change that.”
“If they make smart decisions, we’re going to have a much better relationship with that island,” he said.
Widespread scepticism
Some of the reforms announced by Cuba were a rehash of earlier proposals, such as granting greater autonomy to state-owned enterprises, which account for roughly 80% of economic activity.
Many disillusioned locals shrugged off the announcements as too little too late, or more state “lies.”
“It’s a lie, we’ve been doing this for 67 years and it gets worse every day,” Iris, a 58-year-old cleaner, who had been without power at home for 12 hours, seethed.
The country’s small but growing business class welcomed the changes, however, while making clear they did not see them as a quick fix.
The reforms “offer hope, a chance that may or may not materialise,” said Mario Gonzales, the 32-year-old manager of a restaurant in Havana’s historic old town which was thronged with tourists a decade ago and now fills only a handful of tables for dinner.
Additional sources • AFP