Cuba’s Communist Party government has shown that times of greatest scarcity are not the scenarios that most threaten its power.
By Yoani Sanchez (14ymedio)
HAVANA TIMES – The drip drip drip of bad news for Cubans does not stop. Within just a few days, the authorities announced the reduction in the size of the bread rolls sold in the rationed market; the energy deficit has escalated to a point where blackouts in many provinces exceed 12 hours a day; and the lack of water affects more than a million people throughout the island. Faced with such a scenario, citizens are wondering to what extent the situation could deteriorate in the coming months and what the government is willing to do to stop its fall.
Seen from outside, the crisis that Cubans are experiencing could be seen as the final stretch of a political and economic model that will end up imploding. However, Castroism has shown, over the course of six decades, that the moments of greatest scarcity and desperation are not precisely the scenarios that most threaten its power. The most difficult periods for ordinary people are the times the regime takes advantage of to tighten controls and reinforce its authoritarian discourse. This ideological radicalization can be perceived these days and grows in the same measure as do inflation and despair.
Analysts who have been wrong in successive predictions of an opening are once again venturing to predict that, faced with a lack of resources, the Plaza of the Revolution will have to embark on the path of reforms. But the signals that the Cuban government has given in recent weeks point in another direction: an offensive against private businesses. Faced with the imposition of price caps on certain basic products, and an army of inspectors fining merchants who do not accept the new regulations or who are too slow in implementing electronic payments, the private sector finds itself on alert.
There is also no progress in the area of civil liberties. More than a thousand political prisoners remain incarcerated, a good number of whom demonstrated during the Island-wide mass protests of 11 July 2021. The demand for an amnesty that would allow these prisoners to return home has been met with deafness by a government that has opted for exemplary punishment rather than a conciliatory and magnanimous gesture. Added to this is the imminent entry into force of a new Communications Law that will further narrow the space for independent journalists and intensify the reprimands for those who publish dissenting content on social media.
Described in this way, if the current situation continues, it would seem like a suicidal path for the regime itself, which will end up provoking a new social explosion if it persists in its stubborn control over every corner of the country’s economic and political life. But, in its logic of surviving at any price, the Cuban leadership believes that any opening will be read as weakness, and allowing a small space for dissent could weaken its authority. The leaders of the Communist Party are willing to witness, from their comfortable arm chairs, the national ruin rather than publicly recognize their inability to solve the problems of the Island and allow the emergence of new political actors.
The mansions of the olive-green bosses avoid the stench of the garbage dumps that grow on every corner of Havana, and their swimming pools are filled with water even though thousands of families only receive it from tanker trucks once every two or three weeks. There is no shortage of food on their tables, the size of their bread has not shrunk, and the lamps above their heads do not go dark due to the lack of fuel. Surrounded by privileges, the military leaders can hold on to the ship’s helm much longer. It remains to be seen how the people react to a worsening of the crisis: by taking to the streets to change the course of the nation or by taking to the sea to escape from Cuba.
Translated by Translating Cuba.
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