Mexico City.
Queuing as a full-time job. President Diaz-Canel speaks of a temporary bottleneck. But no one believes that anymore.
In Because everyone knows what the expression “Cola fantasma” means. It’s like queuing just in case. If there’s gas, or chicken, or toilet paper, or anything that every Cuban needs, but which is sometimes as rare as a snowflake on the communist-ruled Caribbean island. Standing in line has become almost a full-time job for most of the eleven million islanders. But often enough the announced delivery doesn’t happen – a phantom.
Cuba is suffering from the worst socio-economic crisis since the collapse of the Soviet Union almost a quarter of a century ago. This certainty, held since the pandemic, continues to get worse. Power cuts, fuel shortages and food shortages are becoming more and more reminiscent of the early 1990s when revolutionary leaders Fidel Castro proclaimed the “Periodo especial” after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Back then, it was time to buckle your belt to the last hole. It is the same again almost a quarter of a century later. Only today the people on the island no longer have patience and even less understanding for the government.
Cuba is on the brink of collapse
Inflation, reduced oil supplies from Venezuela, currency and food shortages, a lack of vacationers, mismanagement and the continued US economic embargo are a toxic cocktail. The UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean CEPAL calculates the island’s economic growth at 1.8 percent this year.
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The government in Havana, however, insists that gross domestic product will grow by three percent. The country is on the brink of collapse. Above all, the galloping prices and fewer and fewer energy aids from the clammy brother from Venezuela are making the situation worse. Last year, Venezuela’s oil supplies to Cuba fell again by six percent to 53,600 barrels per day. Caracas used to send more than twice as much.
Cuba: After Easter, drivers queued up at the petrol stations
Right now, after Easter, it was the petrol that didn’t exist. And so local traffic and transportation almost completely collapsed. Car owners and especially taxi drivers stood and stand in line for days and nights in front of the capital’s petrol stations Havana in the hope that at some point a tanker truck will come along that will bring the desired fuel.
But fewer and fewer believe President Miguel Díaz-Canel’s words that this is a temporary bottleneck. The Crisis has long been chronic in Cuba. Inflation is high, the euro now costs 190 pesos on the black market instead of the 122 at the official exchange rate. And for a government salary, you can’t even fill the fridge all the way up. More and more people have enough and leave the island. In the past year alone, a good 300,000 Cubans are said to have passed Mexico entered the United States without papers. In 2021 there were still 39,000.
Cubans complain: “It’s worse than ever for us”
“It’s worse for us than ever,” is a complaint that is heard again and again on the island. “If there is no lack of spirit, then there is none Strom, once it’s there, there’s nothing to buy. It’s cyclical and infinite,” says a young man who asked not to be named. It looks even darker in the provinces than in the Capital city. Internal migration has led to overpopulation in Havana. Those for whom the government cannot provide housing live in ‘albergues’, abandoned buildings that have been converted into temporary housing. Others live in the old socialist tenements, some of which are threatened with collapse.
Despite the emergency, the Cuban parliament has now confirmed Miguel Díaz-Canel for another five-year term. In 2018, his election was linked to the hope of an accelerated opening and more freedom. But the 63-year-old turned out to be a “preserver” and not a “reformer”. Continuity became his main guiding principle and the motto of government.
Havana: The deeper the crisis, the greater the fear of change
Today, as the island is going through one of the worst economic and social crises in its history, there is no doubt that the next five years will bring even more stagnation. The deeper the crisis, the greater the fear of change in the communist leadership.
The situation in spring 2023 is particularly complicated for everyone on the island. based on tourism, the island’s second most important source of foreign exchange, one can see how little the recovery is succeeding. 1.04 million foreigners visited in 2022 Because, 37.8 percent of visitors in 2019. However, the government’s goal was to attract 2.5 million foreign tourists. The sector was hit particularly hard by the almost complete absence of vacationers from Russia since the Ukraine war and the significantly reduced number of US tourists. Most visitors still come from Canada.
For 2023, the Ministry of Tourism is aiming for 3.5 million visitors. The number seems illusory, also in view of the tense supply situation and the constant power cuts and fuel shortages, which often turn a planned luxury into one adventure holiday make. Word has gotten around to the tour operators as well.
Economist on Cuba: “It’s a matter of life and death”
Aside from the many small crises and shortages in countless places, several economists agree that the Cuban crisis is structural and not cyclical. It’s a systemic crisis, says Pavel Vidal, who teaches at the Catholic Javeriana University in Cali, Colombia. Like the economist Omar Everleny, he calls for real reforms and, above all, economic liberalization. At the system of planned economy and the state-owned companies continue to cobble around in key sectors will bring no relief in the long term. “It’s a matter of life and death, it’s a matter of the highest priority,” warns economist Everleny.
For Vidal, the way out of the crisis is through a far-reaching macroeconomic stabilization program to Inflation to stop and create a more favorable scenario for economic growth. “This must include austerity measures and changes in monetary and exchange rate policies, but also structural and institutional changes.”
Quite a few believe that the “Cuba system” cannot be reformed
According to Everleny, two years ago “the law was finally passed” that made it possible to set up more than 7,000 small and medium-sized private companies, which have meanwhile brought almost 200,000 people to work. But for these small-scale private initiatives to become a dynamic factor, obstacles such as high taxes and excessive bureaucracy be eliminated. There is also a need for an official foreign exchange market that enables new entrepreneurs to raise the money they need to run a business.
Other experts, on the other hand, believe that the “Cuba system” cannot be reformed and is doomed. Either through social protest like in the summer of 2021, which could eventually lead to a “regime change” or through emigration. In the past five years alone, a tenth of the population has left the country. And it’s not the old and the sick who go, but the young, the well-educated, who no longer have any prospects for themselves Island see.
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