The Cuban Experiment - Part Five

With socialism on the island of Cuba closer than ever to collapse, Latin America Correspondent Jon Bonfiglio traces the Cuban Experiment, from the Batista regime which pre-dated the revolution, to the present day. 

Transcript

11th March 2020. Three cases of COVID are confirmed in Cuba, diagnosed in 3 Italian tourists. The next day, a fourth case is confirmed in a Cuban whose wife had recently returned from Milan. A few days later, the cruise ship Braemar docks in Cuba after being turned away by the Bahamas. There are multiple confirmed COVID cases aboard, but passengers are allowed to take flights home from Havana after government interventions. On the 18th March, a week after the initial confirmed diagnoses of the Italian tourists, one of them dies. The Cuban government restricts entry to foreign citizens, immediately eliminating its tourism sector, which accounts for over 10% of its total GDP. By 22nd March, less than two weeks after the initial confirmed cases, Cuba is monitoring over 1000 suspected cases. On 1st April, Cuba suspends all international flights. 

Although Cuba will statistically suffer significantly fewer deaths than other countries, largely due to its developed health sector, its economy - what little of it exists - will once again be decimated, literally. 

COVID will be another major crisis for the country, one it is unable to shake, even on to the present day, as not only does it strike at the heart of the country, but also exacerbates other structural issues facing the island, in particular the US embargo and sanctions, and an economic stasis brought on by lack of economic diversity and independence. In January 2021, an attempt is made by the Cuban government to simplify its economy and bring the peso and the convertible peso into one currency, which in theory would aid the fluidity of the economy. Without hard currency, however, brought in by tourism, and without the artificial prop of the convertible peso, inflation soars to 500%. For a people already on the edge, it is a devastating development. Soon after, for the first time in living memory, widespread protests are seen in the country, and the government responds punitively. Scores are jailed, thousands flee the country in a new exodus. Within a year, approaching half a million Cubans have left the country, somewhere in the region of 4% of Cubans, in that 12 month period alone. Even for a country marked by the scars of departures, it is its biggest ever exodus, and feels different, as though the country and its people cannot take any more. It feels like something of a death spiral. Venezuelan oil is one of the last remaining cards the Cuban economy has to play, but there is little else.

In 2023, close to another half a million Cubans leave the island. At the same time, the average monthly wage for professionals, at an equivalent of 15 USD, buys you a couple of cartons of eggs, and a kilo each of rice and beans. That’s a month’s wage. 

Cuba is suffering the single worst crisis since the revolution. It is used to crises, and to the long game. It has never experienced anything like this before. This is a collapse of the economy, again, but more than that, it’s a shattering of its social fabric. Even during the worst of times, Cubans had their shared belief systems, their soul. Not any more. 

Between early 2024 and the start of 2025, renewed and strengthened US sanctions take $8 billion USD from the Cuban economy, 50% more than during the previous 12 month period, 

Tourism in 2025 numbers 2.3 million visitors, less than half of what it was prior to the pandemic. US threats to deny access to the United States for those who have visited Cuba has spooked travellers, as have water shortages, power cuts and viral images of piled-up, rotting waste on the island. 

Then something completely new happens: the health system starts to collapse. One of Cuba’s greatest historical achievements and assets is so chronically, impossibly underfunded that it collapses in on itself. It’s yet another dagger through the heart.

By mid 2025, an epidemic of diseases sweeps the country, with reduced state infrastructure on these likes of waste collection and access to clean water multiplying across to reduced fumigation capability in urban centers, a proliferation of mosquitos and a mass bloom of mosquito-borne diseases such as zika, chikungunya and dengue. For remaining Cubans, it’s not only a serious public health crisis, it’s also a sign that these are the dog days of the revolution. 

Of Cuba’s historic, socialist strengths, all that remains intact is the Communist Party, and the flow of Venezuelan oil, and we already know what is going to happen there in early January 2026.

A note on the Communist Party. As we know, Fidel Castro's brother had already assumed control of the country ahead of Fidel’s death in 2016, and in 2021, a new figure assumes command. Enter Miguel Díaz-Canel, 30 years younger than Raul, and seen as representing a new generation of Cuban communism. Whichever way you crack the nut, however, Diaz-Canel is not a Castro, and so Cuba is led for the first time in 62 years by someone who does not carry that emblematic name. Raul never had anything like Fidel’s charisma, but he did carry the name, and that was significant. Another highly important, subtle-yet-marked factor, is that Diaz-Canel was born after the revolution in 1959. Once again, public memory is fading. An age is passing. 

—

Cuba of the revolution no longer exists. That is plain, undeniable. 

Economically, the island never flourished under communism, or - rather - it was never allowed to breathe given the political importance of punishing the island for the presence of a counter-capitalist regime. But despite its economic hardships, Cuba had a firm belief in itself. It knew what it was. Many people didn’t like it; many others suffered at its hands - but it had a clear sense of identity and purpose. And generating this - holding it in position - were multiple factors. Of all of these, only the Communist Party remains. No others. Every Cuban knows it. The Communist Party knows it.

And, perhaps most important of all, the United States knows it too.