By Pedro Monzón Barata

August 1, 2026  Al Mayadeen English

 

The history of the Cuban Revolution is a dialectical process in which each crisis has given rise to a creative response that preserves the essential while transforming the incidental.

The contemporary debate on the Cuban economy must fundamentally recognize the US economic, commercial, financial, and petroleum blockade as the primary cause of its current deformations and deficiencies. While endogenous determinants certainly exist and are subordinate to this external factor, they cannot be presented as the principal consequence of an intrinsically failed political model. If the Cuban state’s economy had been fundamentally flawed, the Revolution would have failed decades ago.

No country in the world could have withstood such an implacable extraterritorial siege for nearly seven decades while maintaining intact pillars of social justice as in education and health. The unity of the Cuban people around the Party and government has been decisive, but understanding this requires grasping the dialectical and intimate relationship between economic policy, social policy, and political unity—none exists without the others, and this historical synthesis has enabled the Revolution to build a uniquely human project on the international stage.

The thesis proposed here begins from a fundamental premise: Cuba’s current economy must be understood as an expression of institutional rationality historically sedimented under prolonged conditions of geopolitical vulnerability. This rationality—a structural logic of survival—has permitted remarkable state resilience while simultaneously generating first-order human developments that constitute the Revolution’s true legacy.

The problems the Revolution has sought to correct are not the product of isolated subjective errors or poor management. They are fundamentally the accumulated result of historical decisions made to preserve social justice and national unity in the face of the most comprehensive and enduring system of unilateral “sanctions” the United States has ever imposed on an independent state. The Revolution’s survival through eleven US administrations is the most eloquent proof that its economic model, though deformed by the siege, has sustained a national project that others, under infinitely more favourable conditions, could not maintain.

Achievements: The irreversible conquests of human development

Reducing the Cuban experience to mere survival would ignore the Revolution’s most significant achievements. Cuba has not simply survived; it has created, innovated, and developed human capacities that distinguish it internationally.

Cuban biotechnology exemplifies this creative capacity under adversity. Cuba has developed a world-class industry including unique products, most notably the Abdala and Soberana vaccines developed during COVID-19. Abdala demonstrated 92.28% effectiveness, becoming the first Latin American COVID-19 vaccine to receive emergency use authorization, while the Soberana combination achieved 91.2% effectiveness. The country attained capacity to produce 60-70% of its medications locally—essential given the blockade. The Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (CIGB), founded in 1986, has become a globally recognized institution for innovative products with social benefit.

The Cuban healthcare system is perhaps the Revolution’s most tangible achievement. Since 1959, Cuba has built a public, universal, and free system. Free healthcare became a fundamental right, and the country developed large-scale medical training capacity, exporting health services to dozens of nations. Life expectancy at birth has reached levels comparable to developed countries—an eloquent indicator of effectiveness.

The educational system constitutes another significant achievement. Education is public and free at all levels. The Literacy Campaign eradicated illiteracy and triggered a continuous process of educational and cultural elevation. Cuba today has a literate population with universal access to higher education and a scientific tradition that transcends its geographic and economic size. These achievements result from a fundamental political decision: prioritizing human well-being and development above any other consideration.

The blockade as architect of anomaly

Specialized literature has identified with increasing precision how the blockade not only limits direct trade with the United States but modifies the country’s entire economic structure. This is not merely another obstacle for a normal economy; the blockade is the architect of Cuba’s “anomaly”. The US sanctions system interrupts Cuba’s international economic relations by making it costly and risky for other countries to do business with the island. This extraterritorial effect—consolidated in 1992—means third countries and foreign companies face sanctions for maintaining economic ties, raising transaction costs, and threatening reprisals against foreign banks and businesses.

Researcher Joy Gordon, an American academic at Loyola University Chicago who has extensively studied sanctions’ impact, documents how they create obstacles to accessing new technologies and foreign direct investment in strategic sectors like biotechnology, health, sciences, and tourism. This restriction on technological and financial access is not a minor collateral effect; it is the central mechanism perpetuating underdevelopment. Fidel Castro addressed the blockade with crystalline clarity: in 1963, he warned of imperialist efforts to tighten the siege and affirmed revolutionary resistance; in 1992, he specified that the blockade involves fierce pressure and persecution to prevent any commercial operations; and in 1977, he underscored its immorality as an active coercive mechanism, denouncing that the United States pretended to use the blockade as a negotiating weapon to force political concessions from Cuba, making normalization of relations non-negotiable while the siege persisted as an instrument of blackmail against the Cuban people.

Centralization as defensive response

One of the blockade’s most profound structural effects is the extreme centralization of the economy as a defence mechanism. Faced with the impossibility of relying on “normal” economic development projects aligned with the predominant global capitalist relations, the Cuban government applied centralizing policies to distribute scarce resources toward social justice: education, health, and so forth. However, this process gave rise to bureaucratic growth that became a brake on productive forces. Centralization, born as defense, became an end in itself. As Cuban economist Raúl Rodríguez notes, “The impact of the blockade has been a factor in the continuity of a centrally planned economy, insofar as the State seeks to distribute scarce resources.”

This is not a pure ideological option but a structural adaptation under recurrent pressure. The State centralized foreign trade and currency control to evade OFAC banking persecution and prevent private or foreign capital from becoming a counterpower Washington could exploit. The unintended but inevitable consequence was bureaucratic hypertrophy—precisely what current reforms seek to correct without renouncing strategic state control.

The dialectic of egalitarianism and unity

The essential interest in maintaining unity at all costs—for reasons of principle and to confront US threats—necessitated avoiding shock policies that could generate impacts on large population segments. This resulted in a certain egalitarianism that, in the blockade’s context, acquired singular characteristics. This logic explains phenomena that appear incomprehensible from outside: inflated payrolls in loss-making enterprises, the ration book as social assistance, and subsidized basic services, etc. The State has preferred a slower but more equitable economy over a more efficient but unequal and fractured one, because social fracture is unjust and, in a psychological war of attrition, provides a breeding ground for covert intervention or a “Cuban Spring”.

This dialectical process has generated virtues enabling survival through numerous US administrations. Capacities have emerged from defects, creativity from limitations. Biotechnology, universal education, free healthcare, and an educated populace are largely the result of seeking indigenous solutions given the impossibility of accessing international market technologies. Fidel Castro understood this: in 1993, amid the Special Period, he acknowledged that the dramatic unipolar world forced actions that would never have been undertaken otherwise.

GAESA: A formula to escape the blockade

In this context, the Business Administration Group S.A. (GAESA) emerged as a formula to escape the blockade. Founded by Raúl Castro in 1995 as a financial base during the Special Period, GAESA is a well-organized and effective Cuban business conglomerate operated by the Armed Forces, encompassing significant economic activity in tourism, financial investment, import, export, and remittances. GAESA represents an institutional response to blockade restrictions: an entity capable of operating internationally, establishing alliances with foreign companies, and generating foreign currency that the State centralizes primarily for social policies. It does not respond to private interests. The US government has repeatedly sanctioned GAESA and its associated companies, implicitly recognizing its effectiveness as a mechanism for evading the economic siege, confirming that the objective is asphyxiation of the Cuban social project, not commercial compliance.

International solidarity vs. the failed state label

If there is one fact that dismantles the “failed state” narrative—repeated by Trump and Marco Rubio—it is Cuba’s capacity to sustain its own economy under an inhumane blockade while simultaneously conducting the greatest international solidarity enterprise in modern history. Cuba has not only resisted; it has shared. This vocation, initiated in 1963 with a medical brigade to Algeria, has extended to 165 countries. Today, more than 24,000 Cuban collaborators provide services in 56 nations, defying US-orchestrated smear campaigns. The “Henry Reeve” Contingent, founded in 2005, was the only one to send sustained brigades during the Ebola outbreak in West Africa and deployed 58 brigades in 42 countries during COVID-19, including Italy. In education, the “Yo, sí puedo” method has taught literacy to millions, and the Latin American School of Medicine has graduated more than 31,200 professionals from 122 countries—244 Americans—all trained for free.

A failed state collapses; Cuba resists and projects itself. A failed state abandons its people; Cuba maintains free health and education under siege. A failed state does not train doctors for the world; Cuba has graduated over 31,000. A failed state does not deploy 24,000 collaborators across 56 nations; Cuba does so while blockaded. The real question is: what other country, subjected to a similar siege for sixty years, would have been capable of survival and such solidarity?

Reforms without surrender

The history of the Cuban Revolution is a dialectical process in which each crisis has given rise to a creative response that preserves the essential while transforming the incidental. The package of 176 economic and social transformations approved in June 2026, grouped into 23 thematic axes, inscribes itself in that same logic: it is not a surrender to capitalism but a transmutation of the economy to continue resisting and preserve socialism under the most ferocious siege in history—the continuity of the socialist survival strategy elevated to a new level.

The context: The Trump administration imposed a petroleum siege in January 2026, worsening the crisis the island has suffered for half a decade. The blockade intensified with Executive Orders supporting the “genocidal energy siege” and internationalized financial, energy, and investment persecution through secondary sanctions. In total, Trump adopted more than 300 new sanctions, including Cuba’s inclusion on the “state sponsors of terrorism” list. As Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel denounced, this is a “multidimensional aggression” complicating every aspect of daily life. Facing blackouts exceeding 30 hours and shortages of food, fuel, water, and medicines, the president recognized that “reality imposes urgent and necessary changes.” This follows the 1990s logic that created GAESA, but now the siege is more sophisticated, and the response must be deeper.

The content: The 176 measures result from extensive consultation in the Political Bureau, Party Central Committee, National Assembly, and Council of Ministers. Central axes include: state enterprises gain more autonomy with decentralized pricing and salaries; foreign trade opens by eliminating mandatory state intermediation and allowing direct foreign investment; government bureaucracy shrinks from 27 to 21 ministries while municipalities gain economic planning power; and private actors expand with more MSMEs, fewer restrictions, and equal conditions for Cuban nationals in Cuba and abroad, as well as foreign investors.

Continuity of Socialism: Those who see an “opening to capitalism” ignore explicit declarations. Díaz-Canel has been categorical, “It will never be our purpose to restore capitalism in Cuba. It is about saving the Revolution and its undeniable social conquests.” He affirmed reforms are directed at continuing socialist orientation, creating resources for socialist construction and preserving health, education, sports, and social justice—sovereign decisions, not concessions. Prime Minister Manuel Marrero was emphatic: although they recognize market mechanisms for efficient resource allocation, they in no sense imply renouncing the State’s social responsibility. Raúl Castro, in a letter, endorsed the transformations as what best serves the Revolution, while the official document establishes as a fundamental principle: “Maintaining centralized planning, which means directing…”

The survival dialectic: What some interpret as “capitalism” is the response of a besieged economy that must make resource allocation more efficient to avoid collapse. Recognition of market mechanisms is not capitalism but recognition that socialism must be viable to be sustainable. As Díaz-Canel stated, “Every opportunity amid a crisis must be seized as a moment of takeoff, as a moment of growth.” In Fidelista logic, the 176 transformations are an exercise of sovereignty to adapt the model to a hostile reality while preserving its essence—the continuation of the survival strategy that has allowed the Revolution to resist for six decades.

Conclusion: Toward a historical synthesis

The Cuban Revolution has survived eleven US administrations because of a dialectical process that has extracted virtues from limitations and capacities from deficiencies, finding in international solidarity—offered and received—one of its most solid pillars. Without this process, the Revolution would have failed. The persistence of the revolutionary project is the most compelling proof that its economic model, though deformed by the siege, has sustained a national project others failed to maintain under infinitely more favourable conditions.

The Cuban economy has not functioned as a market economy nor as a classical Soviet planned one. It has been a siege economy where the primary objective is not to grow but not to collapse, while developing the human capacities that distinguish Cuba internationally. In that objective, despite everything, it has succeeded. Each year without the blockade achieving its goal of subjugation is a victory, an affirmation that a people’s will can overcome an empire’s might.

The fact that Cuba, despite great difficulties, has sustained its economy under history’s most ferocious blockade, preserved social justice pillars, and deployed one of the world’s greatest international solidarity enterprises is the most compelling proof that its model is not failed. On the contrary, it demonstrates a capacity for resistance, creativity, and humanist projection without parallel. No failed state could have done what Cuba has done.

The 2026 reforms, far from capitulation, continue that logic: the economy transmutes to avoid disappearing, socialism adapts to survive. Cuba’s capacity to reinvent itself under pressure is its greatest strength. Each reform is a new chapter in the socialist survival strategy that has allowed the Revolution to reach this point. We face the challenge of maintaining the logic of survival—which has allowed us to resist—while continuing to bet on development that tangibly benefits the Cuban people, without breaking the social pact that has been our main shield for sixty years. This is the most urgent task of our generation.

The thesis—that the Cuban economy’s problems are the accumulated result of historical decisions made to preserve social justice and unity in the face of the blockade—does not absolve us of subjective errors. These have existed. But to maintain that problems result from “misgovernment” or socialism’s failure is to engage in an ahistorical cut that ignores structural determinants of a continuous six-decade process. It also ignores the palpable evidence that no country subjected to a similar siege for so long would have survived. The true challenge is to learn to be agile without losing direction, to implement reforms with intelligence, pragmatism, and speed, protecting the most vulnerable and preserving the social conquests that constitute the Revolution’s most precious legacy—a task without a manual, to be invented as we have invented almost everything in these six decades of creative resistance.

    1. Communist Party of Cuba. (2026). *Cuba Socialista*: Theoretical and political journal of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba. http://www.cubasocialista.cu/. This is the official theoretical and political journal of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba. It is a fundamental source for understanding the economic and political thought of the Revolution, as its pages discuss the guidelines for economic and social policy, the construction of socialism, and the struggle against the blockade. Citing it provides the official ideological and doctrinal framework underpinning the Cuban government’s decisions.
    2. Presidency and Government of the Republic of Cuba. (2026). Official Website of the Presidency and Government of the Republic of Cuba. https://www.presidencia.gob.cu/ The official portal of the Presidency and Government of Cuba is the primary source for consulting the Cuban state’s decrees, laws, speeches, and official statements. This site publishes information on economic and social transformations as well as declarations by top leaders, making it an indispensable resource for supporting any analysis of state policies and the government’s response to the blockade.

Bibliography

  1. Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, M. M. (2026, junio 18). Díaz-Canel al Parlamento: Cuba cambia para levantarse, para vivir mejor, para seguir siendo libre [Discurso]. Tercera Sesión Extraordinaria de la Asamblea Nacional del Poder Popular, X Legislatura. Presidencia y Gobierno de la República de Cuba. https://www.presidencia.gob.cu/es/noticias/diaz-canel-al-parlamento-cuba-cambia-para-levantarse-para-vivir-mejor-para-seguir-siendo-libre/
  2. Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, M. M. (2026, junio 18). Díaz-Canel en Pleno Extraordinario del Partido Comunista de Cuba: “Estamos convocados todos. Y juntos Venceremos” [Discurso]. Pleno Extraordinario del Comité Central del Partido Comunista de Cuba. Presidencia y Gobierno de la República de Cuba. https://www.presidencia.gob.cu/es/noticias/diaz-canel-en-pleno-extraordinario-del-partido-comunista-de-cuba-estamos-convocados-todos-y-juntos-venceremos-audio/
  3. Lie, A. K., Greene, J. A., & Anderson, W. (2025). Social medicine, otherwise: Cuban health(care) as political praxis. En Medicine on a larger scale: Global histories of social medicine (pp. 297–317). Cambridge University Press.
  4. Partido Comunista de Cuba. (2026). Cuba Socialista: Revista teórica y política del Comité Central del Partido Comunista de Cuba. http://www.cubasocialista.cu/
  5. Presidencia y Gobierno de la República de Cuba. (2026). Sitio Oficial de la Presidencia y el Gobierno de la República de Cuba. https://www.presidencia.gob.cu/
  6. Presidencia y Gobierno de la República de Cuba. (2026, junio 25). Transformaciones económicas y sociales [Documento oficial]. https://www.presidencia.gob.cu/media/filer/public/2026/06/25/transformaciones_economicas_y_sociales.pdf
  7. Rodríguez Rodríguez, R. (2023). The political economy of sanctions: The case of Cuba. En The political economy of sanctions (p. 19). Taylor & Francis.
  8. Ross, P. (2024). How the workers’ parliaments saved the Cuban Revolution: Reviving socialism after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Monthly Review Press.
  9. Science Magazine. (2026, marzo 30). As U.S. blockade bites, Cuba’s health care and science suffer.

 

PHOTO: Photo by Joe Mazzola/Flickr