For Jose Guerra Ferrer, a Havana based industrial engineer, “the economic situation in Cuba is bad”. “I hope it can be addressed by the new parliament,” he says, with reference to national assembly elections this weekend.
In recent years, Cuba’s parliament has implemented gradual policy adjustments to try and ease economic constraints and that is Guerra Ferrer’s hope with the country’s upcoming elections.
The country’s highest political body is assembled through committees such as trade unions and student organisations. Once candidates, most of whom are members of the Communist Party of Cuba, or PCC, are nominated, they can confirm their choice for president.
That is certain to be the incumbent, Manuel Diaz Canel, who took over from Raul Castro in 2018. The following year, in 2019, Diaz Canel, a PCC stalwart, adopted a new constitution. Amid growing political dissatisfaction, it was designed to modernise Cuba’s entrenched state apparatus.
Voter absenteeism has become a feature of recent elections in Cuba. Turnout for the November 2022 municipal elections, for instance, fell below 70 percent for the first time, indicating disengagement in a political system that depends on public support.
Decades of sanctions
Asylum seeking migrants, mostly from Venezuela and Cuba, wait to be transported by U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents.
Large numbers of Cubans have been trying to leave the country [File: Go Nakamura/Reuters]
After US backed leader Fugencio Batista was toppled in 1959, Cuba became a one party state led by Fidel Castro and his successors. Since then, the PCC has defied expectations by surviving decades of economic isolation and the disintegration of the Soviet Union, a key ally.
Since the early 1960s, the cornerstone of US foreign policy towards Cuba has been a controversial trade embargo, among other restrictions. Then, in 2015, the Obama administration began normalising relations with Cuba, including a shift away from sanctions.
By contrast, Donald Trump reintroduced old measures and added new ones as well. He barred US tourism and limited the amount of money Cuban Americans could send to their relatives (some remittance restrictions have been eased under President Joe Biden).
“The truth about sanctions is that repercussions are multilayered,” says Guillaume Long, Ecuador’s former minister of foreign affairs. “Governments are prevented from following standard protocols, which undermines state building capacity.”
He stressed that “there is no doubt that Cuba’s economy has suffered under US sanctions”. The country also experienced a painful adjustment after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Up to that point, the USSR supplied 90 percent of Cuba’s petroleum needs and 70 percent of all other imports, including food and medicine, mostly at subsidised prices.Between 1989 and 1994, Cuban trade with the former Soviet Union plummeted by 89 percent. While domestic production was squeezed, the government consolidated its control over the economy. Large public enterprises have survived through privileged access to credit and foreign currency.
Today, Cuba’s economy remains undiversified and commodity dependent. Tobacco and sugar account for roughly 30 percent of foreign exchange earnings. Cuba also exports healthcare services by sending physicians and nurses to Brazil and Venezuela. Tourism, meanwhile, represents an important source of revenue.
Elsewhere, the PCC has succeeded in establishing reputable education and healthcare systems. Not only is Cuba’s life expectancy higher than the United States’, it is also the smallest country in the world to have successfully developed a vaccine against COVID 19. |
