To promote a nonviolent transition to a Cuba that respects human rights, political and economic freedoms, and the rule of law.
Cuba lacks water, electricity, and food, but the dictatorship doubles down on communist central planning while communist elite enrich themselves.
“Cuba without water and electricity” is the title of a 11 minute 23 second video news report prepared by PalenqueVision that was published on their Youtube channel on September 4, 2024, and now has over 28,000 views.The report is in Spanish, and features a number of interviews with local Cubans, and images of the deteriorating infrastructure.
U.S. News & World Report on September 13, 2024 reported that over 600,000 Cubans “are suffering from water supply issues, officials said earlier this month.” This number, provided by officials of the dictatorship, appears to be a conservative assessment.
Lack of maintenance
This is not a new story, but one that has been unfolding over the past 65 years, and growing progressively worse due to lack of maintenance since 1959.
“Cuba’s water issues stem from an obsolete and deteriorating infrastructure. The original water and sewage systems on the island were installed by the Spanish during their colonial rule of Cuba. Very little maintenance has been done on the system in the five decades since the revolution in 1959,” said University of Miami’s College of Engineering Professor Helena Solo-Gabriele in 2017. The University of Miami was conducting an interdisciplinary study on “how Cubans on the island cope with water issues that result in health and hygiene concerns.”
Despite receiving large subsidies from the Soviet Union for over three decades (1959 – 1991) the Cuban dictatorship did not invest in infrastructure during this time, or when large amounts of resources again began to enter Cuba under the regime of Hugo Chavez. Maintaining the island’s infrastructure was not a “revolutionary priority.”
Doubling down on central planning
Francisco Acevedo in his article published in Havana Times onSeptember 16, 2024 titled “Private Businesses in Cuba’s State-Centered Economy” offers a snapshot of how this translates for Cubans in their everyday lives.
“In Havana, water leaks abound in the streets, sometimes gushing out for months before the state-owned water company arrives to fix the problem. By the time the leak is fixed, millions of liters of water are wasted. This scenario is repeated across municipalities throughout the country.
There is also a shortage of spare parts for the outdated water infrastructure, such as pipes and pumps, and without fuel, the number of water trucks available to solve the problem is insufficient.
The same thing happens with the basic food rations, a ‘conquest’ that is becoming more and more diminished. This week, it was announced that starting this Monday, the weight of the rationed daily bread rolls sold to the population through will be 60 grams instead of the usual 80.
The price will be reduced by 15 cents from its usual price of one peso, but the poor quality will likely remain the same (despite the official note claiming otherwise), and the flour shortage will continue to pressure the state bakeries.
Official data indicate that the island requires about 700 metric tons of flour daily, mostly imported, equating to around 21,000 tons monthly. But the question remains: how is it that private businesses can offer quality bread using the same infrastructure and raw materials?
There are several specialized sales points where one can buy croissants and baguettes, but what reaches the local ration store is a half-raw dough that is only digestible when freshly made.“
Marc Frank and Dav Sherwood in their article “Amid deepening economic crisis, Cuba tightens rules on fledgling private sector“, wrote “Cuba’s booming private businesses braced for impact on Wednesday as the island’s communist-run government implemented a raft of new laws aimed at more tightly regulating the private sector amid a deepening economic crisis.“
Capitalism, or free markets operating under an independent judiciary with the rule of law, has been absent in Cuba since 1959, and has not returned with this current regime.
Russian-style “private enterprise: Regime oligarchs and corruption
Havana had been touting a “transition” to Russian-style “private enterprise”. In a country without the rule of law there are no “Cuban independent entrepreneurs” doing large scale business, but oligarchs connected to the dictatorship. Lessons Castro regime officials learned from their Russian allies on “capitalism” and that Cuban economist Elías Amor Bravo explains in 14ymedio in his April 10, 2023 article “What Can Happen with the Russian Economic Plans in Cuba?”
“In reality, the experience of Cuban SMEs in the last year has little to do with the free enterprise of which the Russians speak. Of course, it is much better that there are SMEs than that there are none. But the regime has absolutely controlled the process of creation and approval, and despite everything, it has not been able to consolidate productive structures in the field of food, where unattended needs are still very prominent. There has been a commitment to the manufacturing industry and services, which have been consolidated in the first sectoral position. There have also been complaints that some SMEs have been oriented to develop businesses that are in the hands of family and friends of senior officials, as well as foreign entrepreneurs related to the regime. But the truth is that, so far, you can’t talk about an economic class with defined objectives and purposes. The state maintains absolute control of the process, and the SME as an alternative to communist power is weak.”
To understand what is taking place in Cuba one must understand one important fact underscored by Christopher Simmons, retired from the Defense Intelligence Agency with over 23 years of experience as a counterintelligence officer, on May 17, 2012, when he testified before the U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs in a hearing on “Cuba’s Global Network of Terrorism, Intelligence, and Warfare.” He presented the following analysis of the regime in Cuba.
“In many respects, Cuba can be accurately characterized as a violent criminal organization masquerading as a government. The island’s five intelligence services exist not to protect the nation, but to ensure the survival of the regime.”
On August 15, 2024 Tampa resident Mirtza Ocana (age 39) pled “guilty to one count of bulk cash smuggling and one count of conspiracy to commit bulk cash smuggling.” She was smuggling millions of dollars out of Cuba to the United States.
“According to court documents, Ocana returned to the United States on a flight from Cuba on February 5, 2024. Despite telling U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents that she had no cash to declare, Ocana concealed more than $31,000 in her luggage. After agents found this cash, Ocana admitted that she frequently smuggled cash into the United States from Cuba and that she had done so two to three times per month since June 2023. She also told agents that she was paid between $1,000 and $2,500 each time she smuggled cash. Agents searched Ocana and discovered an additional $71,300 in cash hidden in her clothes. In total, agents found approximately $102,700 in cash concealed both in Ocana’s clothes and in her luggage.”
“Corruption can be simple or complex. Officials fortunate enough to have control over scarce resources like fuel sell these on the black market and realize enormous profits. The preferred approach is more indirect, however. Following the outbreak of anti-regime protests in July 2021, the government allowed the establishment of private “micro, small, and medium enterprises,” theoretically as a way to open up the economy to market forces. But most if not all of the 9,000 private enterprises operating in Cuba today are owned by powerful regime figures who then funnel public works contracts to them.”
Alejandro Gil Fernández, Cuba’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Economy and Planning until February 2, 2024, was detained on March 7, 2024. He has been linked to Mirtza Ocana and her “bulk cash smuggling” operation from Cuba to the United States.
Money leaves Miami for Cuba and returns to Tampa for regime oligarchs, and their relatives
Nora Gámez Torres reported in the article “How Miami companies are secretly fueling the dramatic growth of Cuba’s private businesses” published in the Miami Herald on June 23, 2023 that “the money that families have sent to their relatives in Cuba for decades is now fueling an explosion of capitalism on the communist island. Businesses that facilitate that flow of cash have created a clever but complex system that is helping Cuban private entrepreneurs sidestep U.S. financial sanctions and buy abroad the supplies they need for their businesses on the island.”
Now we know that millions of those dollars ended up in the pockets of high ranking Cuban officials, and funneled back into the United States through Tampa.
Meanwhile, Cubans continue to live without water, electricity, and food as infrastructure collapses and the communist elite’s bank accounts increase.
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