Havana/In a brief note published this Thursday by the official press it was announced that the Cuban Government, at the request of the Council of State, “released Ricardo Cabrisas from his responsibilities as Minister of Foreign Trade and Foreign Investment.” The man who passed the hat around the world to attract investments, forgive debts or ask for donations has left the scene.
Although the text warns that Cabrisas will continue as vice prime minister, his end in the Foreign Trade portfolio limits the appearances and travels of this octogenarian with a stony expression and bulletproof loyalty to the so-called historical generation of Cuban power. His discretion and little charisma allowed him to sneak into royal palaces, chancelleries and business salons in much of the world in recent years.
Oscar Pérez-Oliva Fraga, who served as first vice minister of the same ministry, has been appointed as his successor. He is 53 years old and is an electronic engineer. According to the official note, he “has extensive management experience accumulated for more than 15 years in foreign trade activity as a company director” and also responsible for Business Evaluation in the Mariel Special Development Zone.
The parsimony may be given by the same grayness that has surrounded the official’s behavior or a sign that it has not come out on good terms.
The text does not delve into positive qualifiers for Cabrisas, and does not even use the well-known phrases of gratitude for the work accomplished for the ministry. The parsimony may be given by the same grayness that has surrounded the official’s behavior or a sign that it has not come out on good terms, but the secrecy of the official language in Cuba prevents us from unraveling the details.
What is known is what this newspaper had already reported last December, when it chose Cabrisas among the 14 faces of 2023. At that time, his profile highlighted that in almost all the official photographs he appeared shaking the hand of a politician or hugging a banker. His face was that of a poker player, his voice was rarely heard in the media. After the death of Luis Alberto Rodríguez López-Calleja, who had monopolized foreign investments in Cuba, and after his nomination as Minister of Foreign Trade, he had taken the lead as negotiator.
He managed the Foreign Trade office during the rise and fall of the Soviet subsidy, and he worked fine in the position in the Special Period, in the 90s. A stalwart of Fidel Castro and survivor of several waves of dismissals, he seemed to be on his way out of politics. when, at 86 years old, he recovered his old ministry.
He was the man Havana needed to talk with Moscow and grease the dialogue with more severe creditors, such as the Paris Club. Since April of last year, in the presidential delegations that have visited allied countries in search of money, Cabrisas always went. Sibilino, not given to smiling, avoided the limelight and signed multiple treaties.
Cabrisas had popularized the term “memorandum of understanding” in the official press to describe his achievements.
The official plane took him to the Kremlin, to Zhongnanhai – the headquarters of the Chinese Government and Party –, to the Parisian creditors’ office, to the palace of the sheikh of the United Arab Emirates and wherever it was necessary to renegotiate the debts and not return the dollars. that Havana asks and never pays.
The great Creole schemer was a man of signatures, traps and contracts. Cabrisas had popularized in the official press, to describe his achievements, the term “memorandum of understanding.” And that phrase is, perhaps, what determined his favorite pose in the images, more powerful than any greeting or smile: the paper, kept in a red velvet folder, that guaranteed that the regime would hold out a little longer.
He joins, however, the long list of senior Cuban officials who are leaving their duties in 2024, since the dismissal, on February 2, of Alejandro Gil Fernández as Minister of Economy. Under investigation a month later, for “serious errors committed in the exercise of his duties,” nothing is still known about this former minister, beyond the statements that the comptroller general, Gladys Bejarano, gave to the EFE agency last week. pass. For the official, it is a case of corruption that felt “like a betrayal.”
The “cadre movement” prior to Cabrisas was that of Alexandre Corona, who on April 25 resigned from his position as governor of Cienfuegos “upon recognizing errors committed in the exercise of his responsibility.”
