The eternal question that millions of people linked in one way or another to Cuba en: What is going to happen on the island this year? The answer will vary depending on the degree of real information about Cuba and your personal desires or expectations. But, putting these factors aside, we are going to look, objectively, at the Cuban reality for 2025.
The first observation goes towards the economy because it is what governs the main political decisions. Let us remember the famous phrase coined by James Carville in Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign in 1992: “It’s the economy, stupid.” And the Cuban economy could not be in worse condition. Its agriculture is semi-abandoned and lacks the resources essential for its operation. He regime Castro has to import almost 90% of what the country consumes. The industrial base, in the same or worse conditions than agriculture and with obsolete, inefficient and poorly maintained equipment, to which is added a permanent shortage of raw materials, cannot have any other result than scarce industrial production and of very poor value. that cannot satisfy even rationed national demand.
This means that Cuba’s productive base is shattered and unable to rebuild itself under the severe crisis facing the regime. The sources of income to import the food needed have been limited to the export of medical services, the receipt of remittances from abroad and the tourism. That economic reorientation, which worked for them for several years, has eroded. The business of medical services contracts has been obstructed and decimated after the United Nations Human Rights Rapporteurs labeled such contracts as “slave labor.” From about $11,543 million that the regime received annually 8 years ago, it has now been reduced to about $2,000 million. Remittances, which 10 years ago contributed to the regime about $2.5 billion annually, have dropped to just over $80 million as a result of the emigration of more than a million people after the protests and repression unleashed since July 11. of 2021. And the drop in tourist visits has been another very hard blow for the regime’s economy. Of the 3.2 million I expected, only 1.8 million have arrived, and they also came with a less pleasant component of Russian tourists who typically spend very little.
The tourism outlook for 2025 is much gloomier. The United States, Canada, Germany, Italy and Spain, which provide the overwhelming majority of visitors, have issued alerts warning that the island lacks electricity, water, internet and telephone services, transportation and quality medical care. deficiency emergency, in addition to a growing danger of assaults due to all the previous deficiencies. Last October, the beginning of the high tourism season, the island only received about 125 visitors as evidence of what the trend may be in 2025.
This dramatic situation of lack of income is reflected in the statements of ministers who frequently go on television to present justifications to the population for the growing shortages they suffer. Just two days ago, the Minister of Domestic Trade, Betsy Díaz Velázquez, said: “…the family basket is completed depending on the availability of resources that the country has. We are today in the most complex moment…” (Understand, the most difficult).
The income crisis is reinforced by the lack of international credit because the regime has not complied with any of the debt forgiveness agreements that several countries granted it last decade. In 2021, the Castro regime informed the Paris Club that it could not make the payments promised in the agreement that forgave them $8.5 billion in 2016.
Last month, and tired of waiting for payment for the Yutong buses and the internet and cell phone equipment that Huawei sold them, China canceled its purchase agreement for 400,000 tons of sugar that it bought annually from the island, increasing the problems. of income from the regime and worsening their credit.
This inability to produce and import food and medicine has created a dramatic situation on the island. The milk, which they only sell to children under 7 years old, has been replaced with “pineapple syrup.” Medicines for chronic patients do not appear.
Added to the shortage of food and medicine is the lack of electricity, which has its main problem in the lack of money to import oil. Electricity outages produce water supply cuts, and both shortcomings exhaust the tolerance of the population who, on average 400, take to the streets to protest so much abuse, turning the economic crisis into a social crisis.
And it is not only the lack of food, medicine, electricity and water that torments Cubans. It is also: the lack of transportation, housing, low salaries and inflation. There are very serious health problems that translate into communicable diseases. Garbage accumulates in barren lots and even on street corners because the regime does not have trucks to collect it. The garbage rots and attracts rats, mosquitoes and cockroaches that create an unhealthy climate and the transmission of diseases. In the last meeting of the National Assembly of People’s Power it was reported that there are more than 11,000 “dumping” pits pending cleaning throughout the country. These overflowing pits pour their sewage into the streets, creating plague and sources of infection.
Dengue and oropouche are wreaking havoc on a population that avoids going to hospitals for fear of contracting worse diseases because there are no medicines to treat them.
The outlook prior to the arrival of 2025 could not be more gloomy. Of the 8 Turkish patanas hired to alleviate the lack of electricity, only 3 remain. The rest left due to lack of payments. Thermoelectric plants suffer constant breakdowns due to their obsolete equipment and the poor maintenance they have had. There is no money to import oil, just as there is no money to import food and medicine, but Miguel Díaz-Canel continues to assure that “they will not renounce socialism.”
2025 promises to be a very hard year for the people, where they will have to choose between continuing to endure the horrible shortcomings that have been imposed on them or taking to the streets to demand that the Communist Party leave power that does not belong to it.
Luis Zuniga
Political analyst
Former diplomat
