By W.T. Whitney Jr.
July 17, 2024
The BBC on March 17, 2024 reported that Cuba “is experiencing an economic contraction that has lasted several years and affects food production and the availability of medicines … For the first time the government officially requested aid from the United Nations World Food Program.” Inflation is high. There is massive emigration and no international ally to provide financial relief. Power-outages are frequent.
Cuba’s economy contracted 1.9 percent in 2023. Cuba’s infant mortality rate (IMR) – the number of infants dying in their first year of life per 1000 live births – was 4.7 in 2013, 6.2 in 2022, and 7.9 in 2023. The IMR faithfully reflects a society’s social conditions.
How is Cuba responding to worsening crisis? Deliberations at a recent meeting of Cuba’s Council of Ministers and a plenary session of the Cuban Communist Party’s Central Committee may show how government and Party officials are reacting and indicate resources they can rely on.
In the Council of Ministers’ meeting, as reported on June 30, President Miguel Díaz-Canel called for limiting state expenses, limiting pay-outs from the state to the non-state sector, increasing participation of state entities in providing services, and cracking down on tax evasion. He lauded “very good experiences of labor collectives … in doing things differently and moving ahead.” He condemned speculation and black marketeering as contributing to inflation.
Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz criticized “bureaucracy and ineffective control of our institutional system that are limiting creative work and promoting undesirable distortions in our society.” He called for increasing national production and export income, promoting direct foreign investment, capturing remittances for the economy, and identifying sources of financing.
Without specifying, Vice-Minister of Economy and Planning Mildrey Granadillo de la Torre referred to new ways of attracting foreign currency; incentivizing national production, especially food products; improving management of non-state entities, and reducing tariffs on importation of raw materials.
She spoke of adjusting the budget to a “war economy” and an expanding deficit. She anticipated “a single, inclusive and equal pricing policy … [on the way] for state and non-state sectors of the economy.” Vice-minister of finances and prices Lourdes Rodríguez Ruiz reported on plans for caps on prices for essential goods sold by non-state enterprises.
The Central Committee’s Eighth Plenary Session since the Communist Party Congress of 2021 took place on July 5-6. The agenda, as always, included a rendering of accounts from the Political Bureau and assessment of implementation of earlier recommendations. The problems of reduced agricultural production and high prevalence of corruption and crime were highlighted.
Social misbehavior
Julio César García Pérez, head of the Justice Ministry’s “Office of Attention” to the system of People’s Power, led a discussion of “crime, corruption and social illegalities.” He recalled that the Party had been called upon at its last Congress to take on “strategic leadership” in this area. As regards “implementation and fulfillment, the results are insufficient,” he reported.
Crime is widespread, with “major incidents of attacks against our patrimony,” often committed by young people and “persons uninvolved in work or study.”
The prevailing crimes are: abusive pricing, “illicit commercialization of diverse products,” drug-trafficking, livestock stealing, “speculation on goods and services,” hoarding, administrative corruption, tax fraud, fencing of stolen goods, “lack of discipline in public spaces,” damage to public property, and fighting. García Pérez indicated that “responses on the part of the courts and the attorney-general’s office are more rigorous than before.”
Having met with Party officials at the municipal level, he found that preventative measures were inadequate and follow-up of individual cases lax. Cuba’s attorney general, Yamila Peña Ojeda, assured the Plenary that criminal penalties remain severe, also that “citizens’ rights and guarantees are respected.”
Comptroller-General Gladys Bejerano Portela, recognizing that “the Party is … working to maintain the soul of the Cuban Revolution,” confessed that she “could not understand why … [Party] militants are indifferent to deeds of corruption,” adding that “to not fight [corruption] is counterrevolution.”
Food is short
The Plenary’s discussion of food shortages and low agricultural production focused on implementation of the 2021 Law of Food Sovereignty and Security. Food and Agriculture Minister José Ramón Monteagudo Ruiz, returning to old themes, called for increasing national food production, reducing food imports, and generating competitive exports. Emphasizing the “decisive [role of] Party militants,” he reported on consultations on agricultural production with mass organizations, provincial governing councils, and municipal assemblies.
Monteagudo Ruiz discussed follow-up of legislation of 2022 that prioritized local food producing systems and local self-sufficiency. Party officials had interacted with companies, production units, cooperatives, and markets in 50 municipalities. The minister observed that the reforms of 2008, through which individuals and cooperatives gained long-term use (usufruct) of what now amounts to 31% of all agricultural land, have not adequately bolstered production.
He attributed production deficits to the worsening economic crisis and adverse effects of the U.S. blockade with the result of shortages – specifically, miscellaneous supplies, fuel, spare parts, pesticides veterinary medications, fertilizers, and raw materials for animal feed.
Agriculture minister Ydael Pérez Brito pointed out that, “Harvests do not approach 50% of what is needed,” despite projected plans having been fulfilled. Consensus prevailed that the population’s food requirements are not being met due to reduced levels of planting and harvesting. Proposals re-emerged for enabling companies, organizations, and cooperatives to grow their own food for their own workers and members.
The president speaks
President Miguel Díaz-Canel, addressing the plenary, was optimistic: “If we work in all these areas simultaneously, in a decisive, organized, coherent manner, in a short time we will be managing fundamental issues such as the budget deficit, the excess of circulating cash, tax evasion, abusive prices; we will be managing the proper relations between the state sector and the non-state sector; We will be confronting crime and corruption more decisively … Doing all this will indirectly and gradually influence changes in the exchange rate and in inflation.”
Díaz-Canel elaborated on the job ahead: “I call upon you to correct things unceasingly with determination, effort and imagination, and to confront those negative tendencies that emerge like weeds in difficult moments. The call now is to go out as combatants, which we know how to do and as we have done so many times before.”
He offered perspective: “[E]very day in which we manage to subdue these great difficulties with tenacity, effort, creativity, talent, and with unity of purpose against the genocidal plan of our historical enemy is a victory … [We have] an authentic commitment with the people and have the enormous responsibility of preserving the Revolution, which is simply to preserve its conquests and to keep on advancing on the path of perfecting society, working tirelessly.”
As regards goals: “The Party and its cadres have the mission to stimulate, inspire, mobilize, and engage with militants and the people, aware that an ideal will triumph only as long as it exists for all of us. It is up to the political cadres to lead by example and with deep conviction that it is only possible to advance by working hard, with intelligence, with creativity, aware that each one of us has the potential to grow and improve ourselves.”
And, “We must “guarantee a better and greater access to food. Food production and self-sufficiency are tasks of the first order, in which the entire population must participate … In the current circumstances, we must promote science, innovation and agro-ecology in food production.”
Díaz-Canel indicated that, “Our youth and the formation of our young people require special effort. The beginning premise is that we must comprehensively prepare our teachers and professors”.
He emphasized that, “We must immediately implement concrete actions, firmly fixed and properly controlled. These must be supported with an adequate communication strategy, both politically and institutionally … What we approve will be fulfilled and the objectives well-defined. There will be adequate preparation for those carrying out the various measures. We will promote political, material, and financial backing for implementation, which requires a timeline.”
‘We are here to save the homeland, the Revolution and socialism,” he insisted. “In six decades, the blockade has not been able to defeat the dignity of the Cuban people nor the immense collective … work of the Revolution. Even as it intensifies now, the blockade will not succeed.”
Upshot
The meetings were mostly about plans and remedies already in place, about revolutionary values, and virtues of the Cuban people. The presentations offered no new remedies for fixing Cuba’s economic downturn and shortages. Any new proposals will emanate from the commissions and plenary sessions of Cuba’s National Assembly, deliberating from July 15 on.
Shortages, long the central element of ongoing economic crisis in Cuba, featured prominently in the discussions. The U.S. blockade, tightened recently, and a prime cause of shortages, received attention. But shortages also result from Cuba’s lack of credit, of purchasing power.
That situation is much exacerbated by the U.S. designation of Cuba as a State Sponsor of Terrorism. According to the enabling law, countries so designated may not benefit from transactions involving U.S. dollars. Most international loans are denominated in dollars, and so lenders, fearing U.S. penalties, withhold loans from Cuba.
International solidarity, especially in the United States, has to be heightened in these dire circumstances. The US Catholic Bishops last week adopted a resolution calling for Cuba to no longer be labeled a State Sponsor of Terrorism. This was a modest but important victory. It needs to be multiplied many times over.
-W.T. Whitney Jr. is a political journalist whose focus is on Latin America, health care, and anti-racism. A Cuba solidarity activist, he formerly worked as a pediatrician, lives in rural Maine. W.T. Whitney Jr. es un periodista político cuyo enfoque está en América Latina, la atención médica y el antirracismo. Activista solidario con Cuba, anteriormente trabajó como pediatra, vive en la zona rural de Maine.
