To promote a peaceful transition to a Cuba that respects human rights
and political and economic freedoms
State Capitalism for the Castro dictatorship, communism for the Cubans. Pope Francis disappoints while Cuban Archbishop Dionisio García asks Virgin Mary to intercede for jailed Cubans.
The dollar is “back,” but was it ever really gone?
Adjustments to the internal blockade
Nora Gámez Torres in her article “Cuba to allow foreigners to invest in private businesses, will restart dollar exchanges “ published today in the Miami Herald reports on the communist regime’s latest economic repositioning.
“Facing a humanitarian crisis that threatens to set off new protests on the island, the Cuban government is taking the unprecedented step of authorizing foreign investment in its emerging private sector and will resume an official exchange market for the dollar, among 75 measures authorities said Thursday are meant to boost the country’s economic recovery. Authorities will also cut custom fees and lift restrictions on some goods travelers can bring to the island, Economy Minister and Vice President Alejandro Gil said in a National Assembly meeting on Thursday. “
One year and one month ago on June 21, 2021 the Cuban dictatorship stopped accepting cash bank deposits in dollars, claiming tighter U.S. sanctions were “restricting its ability to use greenbacks abroad, although it will still accept transfers."
This blog expressed its skepticism at the time observing that if “Havana were awash in U.S. dollars that it cannot spend,” … “then why did the Cuban dictatorship on May 21, 2021” announce that it was closing the airport departure lounge exchange booths "that had allowed travelers to change up to $300 at the official rate of 24 Cuban pesos to the dollar — about double the black market rate inside the country." This was an avenue for officials to get rid of those supposed excess dollars at a favorable rate of exchange.
Cuban Economist Elias Amor Bravo, of the Cuban Observatory for Human Rights (OCDH) in a June 11, 2021 essay "The real reason: why the regime is going against the dollar" published in Cubanet revealed that "the regime wants to control and drain the remittances in dollars received by Cubans, and divert them to GAESA, State Security and the hole in the fiscal deficit that does not stop growing."
This is part of the internal blockade that the totalitarian dictatorship has imposed on Cubans to maintain absolute control over them. Cuba, prior to the arrival of the Castro regime in 1959, was able to feed itself from its own domestic production. Like both the Soviet Union and Mao's China that ended with the imposition of communist centralized planning applied to agriculture. This created widespread misery that persists to the present, but also centralized control.
Havana does not allow Cuban farmers to sell their goods directly to other Cubans. They must sell it to the state company, called Acopio. The Acopio fails to pick up crops in time in Cuba, and they rot. 50% is lost before it reaches consumers.
This misery can end immediately through unilateral actions by Havana: lift the internal blockade on Cubans being able to produce and conduct business in the island, end the price gouging on food imported through monopoly regime control and sold to Cubans, and finally stop seizing and rejecting humanitarian shipments from Cubans abroad for their compatriots in the island.
There is a method to this madness. Cubans can no longer grow and sell chickens to other Cubans, but the Castro dictatorship purchases chicken at a dollar per kilo and turns around and sells it to Cubans at seven dollars per kilo. This is order of magnitude beyond what Cubans can afford with their meager earnings. Cubans in the island must appeal to their families abroad to send remittances so that they can afford to eat the chicken imported from the United States. Cubans without families in the exterior do without. Meanwhile, the dictatorship makes hundreds of millions off this arrangement. This is the perverse incentive that maintains the current arrangement.
Western Union was in business with Fincimex, an entity of the Cuban military, used an official exchange of $1 to 24 Cuban pesos, when the real exchange was about $ to 100 Cuban pesos. This means that for each 100 dollars a Cuban abroad sends to a relative in the island the Cuban military took a little over half $52.00, and the remaining $48.00 that the Cuban living on the island received was used to purchase food at the inflated prices described above that also goes to the dictatorship’s coffers.
Chicken imported from the United States continues to feed Cubans across the island at exorbitant prices.
Today, 80% of Cuba's food is imported, and much of it from the United States. In the first five months of 2022 the Cuban government purchased $126 million in U.S. exports.The top three U.S. exports, by tonnage, in May 2022 "were (1) Chicken and other poultry, (2) Corn, and (3) Soybeans. "
Cubans feel alone, and the lack of solidarity with those who engage in profiting off the suffering of the Cuban people to divide up profits with the Cuban military dictatorship. This was the system overseen and managed by Cuban General Luis Alberto Rodríguez López-Calleja who died on July 1, 2022.
On the spiritual plane, Pope Francis has been a disappointment and Cubans around the world, including in Canada are expressing their disappointment.
However, some Cubans drew comfort from Archbishop Dionisio García of Santiago de Cuba who “asked the Virgin Mary to move the hearts of those who can determine the fate of the Cubans imprisoned for demonstrating on July 11, 2021, and that they be released from jail.” The Archbishop cited the declaration by Cuban bishops on the second day of nationwide protests in Cuba last year.
Archbishop García recalled the statement published by the Cuban bishops on July 12, 2021, the day after the demonstrations, in which they affirmed “that every person is free, with rights and duties, because he is a creature of God, made in the image and likeness of God, and that everyone has the right to express himself and give an opinion on situations that concern us all.”
In that spirit, on July 21, 2022 in a Tweet the Center for a Free Cuba invited Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib to ask the Cuban government “to allow: 1) Cuban farmers to sell their produce directly to Cubans in local markets. 2) End price gouging of Cubans. (Ex: Havana buys chicken for $1/kg from U.S. Ag businesses and sells it to Cubans for over $7/kg).”
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