"Come, come to the fair of fools, the circus is starting soon," sang Carlos Varela without knowing the nature of the 2023 fiscal accounts, which, sadly, indicate that the situation will not improve in the short term in Cuba, because the Government continues to do the same things that spawned this...crisis? Debacle? Genocide?
Cuba is a circus of gore whose main spectacle is its sadistic government, which is killing a tied-up and gagged country with morbid brutality while whispering in its ear "these little hotels are good, behold them," "the 39% deficit is for your own good, that's socialism," "yes, we spend more on Public Administration, Defense and Security than on Education and Public Health combined, but that's to protect you, thank you," "agriculture, livestock, hunting and forestry receive less than what we take from the private sector in fines, but that's to spare the people from the obesity from which we, those on the Central Committee, suffer."
The official rhetoric is full of hypocritical fanfare and false expressions of concern as the country grapples with inflation, turned into an Attila that is crushing wages and turning pensions into 13 eggs and a glass of milk a month. The CCP says it is worried about those young people who see no future on the island; young people who, if they do not leave, will end up seeing everything blurry due to the lack of Vitamin B, obtained from meats and fish, from which Cubans suffer, as the Castroist religion prevents its faithful from consuming them.
The government continues to purport concern for the people, but everything it does belies this. In 2023, state spending exceeded revenue by 39%... and there are still those who believe that this government wants to cut inflation! In three years they doubled the amount of money in circulation, up to 390,216 million pesos, but this does not even come close to meeting the needs that the state's issuance of financial liabilities has generated, as the Cuban people split their time between standing in line for bread and standing in line at the ATM... to be able to return to the bread line before it runs out.
Inflation has "stabilized" at over 30%, according to the state's very own National Office of Statistics and Information (ONEI), which has every reason to lie, just like when Fidel did when he claimed that his plan was to restore democracy and the Constitution of 1940, and then proceeded to declare that "Revolution is about never lying or violating ethical principles."
Without real changes in investment (which appear nowhere in the recently published 2023 accounts) the only thing the country will continue to produce, in spades, are its failed meetings and measures. And, as long as Cuba produces nothing endogenously other than wishes for Miami dollars to roll in, inflation will not drop. They make be able to whitewash the figures by impoverishing the people, reducing their purchasing power and limiting the amount of cash in circulation, a combination that reduces demand and prices, but not needs. The never-explained Macroeconomic Stabilization Plan is just an exercise in smoke and mirrors, swapping figures in the General Price Index for more hunger, lines, scarcity, and survival, and less living.
If the national accounts published by the ONEI were an X-ray, looking at those of 2023 a specialist would be asking the patient why he doesn’t change his habits, as, compared to the X-rays from 2022, the metastatic proliferation of a cancer that could be controlled with simple hygienic-dietary measures is clear. Why does the patient insist on a sedentary lifestyle, alcohol, tobacco, and a diet based on ultra-processed food? Does he want to commit suicide?
This country is sinking and being gutted by these bad habits, which have decapitalized it, with these policies having been embraced by the gang of criminals in charge because, although they generated misery, they kept power in their hands. Now, however, poverty levels are so elevated that political power itself is in jeopardy. Thus, why do they continue to exhibit these habits?
The only answer explaining the enigma of why the Cuban authorities do not modify an economic policy that is detrimental even to themselves, placing the very existence of the regime at risk, is the existence within Castroism of a sector that rejects "the continuity" that the PCC promulgates, one that actually wants change and, since this cannot obtain it through a coup d 'état, is pressing for orthodox socialist policies to be maintained. This group knows that the current situation will bring about a collapse, but it is banking on the fact that, when it does, when Castroism collapses and the embargo is lifted, the country's half-empty hotels will fill up with Yankee tourists and millions will flood in, benefitting those tropical oligarchs who, while Díaz-Canel and the PCC creatively resisted, were savvy enough to go to law firms in Panama and, through GAESA, put every last brick of this paradisiacal-island-cum-socialist-hell in their names.
Just as during the second half of the 19th century Cuba remained politically tied to Spain, but its economic lifeline was with the United States (our natural market), today the country is politically in the hands of the PCC and its legions of obese blowhards. Economically, however, it is others who hold the trump cards, and, in the long term, economics always ends up prevailing over politics - always. The military does not want the politicians to change, because what they want is for them to die off... symbolically and organically.
RafaMeanwhile, the people, from the stands of the circus, watch the show without protesting, afraid of being thrown to the trained lions. But they no longer applaud, either, as they have realized that, under this gaudy tent, they are the clowns.