The crisis is so acute in Cuba that he new economy minister Alonso Vazquezhad to admit that “In general, an unfavorable outlook appears (…) income from exports decreases, imports also decrease and different key economic activities are not fulfilled, such as the main agricultural production, sugar and other derivatives, as well as the generation of electricity.
“Besides, more than 300 companies record losses in strategic sectorswhile the depreciation of the Cuban peso persists and (…) the increase in prices“he added before a recent Council of Ministers.
“The situation is terminal,” Alonso Vázquez may have thought to himself while presenting that report.
But eagles continue to fly over the sea without the Government changing the script. “It is true that the best levels of production or performance cannot be achieved, but it is possible to move forward if we exploit collective intelligence to the maximum,” said Premier Marrero in a master class of cynical enthusiasm, as stipulated in the script for the last two decades: hope on steroids and diffuse realities.
However, it is increasingly difficult for them to find reasons for false optimism How bad it is for those obese people who They demand sacrifices from a starving peoplenoticing the intellectual void when, recycling old lies, they fall into obvious discursive contradictions.
The Minister of Economy who, as we saw, recognized that export income was decreasing —something evident with the economy paralyzed—, minutes later he triumphantly stated that a positive element of the period was “the behavior of exports of the main services: medical, tourism and telecommunications”, thus patenting a method for combing one’s hair and making paper.
But the incompatible statements did not stop there. Although Alonso Vázquez at the end of his report praised the humanism of a Revolution that “protects more than 330,000 people in vulnerable situations” – the word “poor” does not exist in Castro’s newspeak – when it came to presenting his conclusions, the Minister of Finance and Prices, Vladimir Regueirorecognized a diametrically different reality: Most of the “decrease” in state spending in the period was due to the non-execution of a group of budget items. that have a great impact, above all, on social policies”.
Who’d say? The socialist government cutting social policies before cutting unnecessary spendingLike the subsidies to the more than 300 companies in the red that could be privatizedif he were not terrified that the people would stop depending on the State.
Without allowing the capitalist free market to advance, which creates wealth, Castroism is removing redistributive networks that at least prevented misery, condemning Cubans to a systemic limbo from which they can only escape with remittances that do not become investment capital, since they immediately disintegrate in the stomachs of the lucky ones who can buy in MSMEs.
The desolation of the country, the hopelessness, is so great that Remittances went from being an engine that drove private entrepreneurship to a simple lifesaver from hungerand they only invest in the only safe business: fleeing.
Not one, not even half an original or useful idea came from the Council of Ministers of a country in humanitarian emergencywhose tragedy goes unnoticed under the monopoly of official information. Only the medical drama today, without fear, can be said to surpass the worst moment of the pandemicwhile suffering is a broken dam that overflows with pain and health aggravations, uncontained by non-existent medicines.
Castroism does not find a way out of the collapse without losing power, but since they see misery from afar—while those who suffer it barely protest, disoriented as they are—they are no longer funny enough to lie. Although, at this point, to say that they lie to us is to lie to ourselves, placing ourselves in the comfortable role of the deceived, a plausible role until the 90s when, isolated from the world, a charismatic sociopath raped our brains; But in 2024 we are not victims, but accomplices, necessary collaborators in a crime against our own humanity. Secondary accomplices, but accomplices nonetheless.
