Castrist-style capitalism: Havana promises economic changes, without yielding political control
Economists and businessmen ensure that there will be no new economy in Cuba if it does not come with a political transformation, something that the island's Government does not seem willing to negotiate.
They seemed like a group annihilated by history, announcing the news of their own failure. Cuba “is living the most difficult hours of this century,” said Cuban leader Miguel Díaz-Canel in June, before members of his Government. “Reality imposes urgent and necessary changes on us.” The moment they had avoided for decades had finally arrived.
They had afforded themselves the luxury of allowing several crises, more than one exodus, popular discontent, and had postponed until then the announcement that Cuba invariably had to open up to the market. Díaz-Canel would later confess that it was a painful decision. “Of course it hurts me,” he said about the intentions to restructure the country's economy on the Russian state channel RT in Spanish.
It hurt him because, he explained, the new measures went “against the concepts that one has been forged in, has been educated in.” The leader was aware: they had just mortgaged, at least publicly, socialism.
Translated by urgent.news. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
