Cuba's regime is at its most vulnerable moment in decades. The island's economic woes, brain drain, the regime's persecution of dissidents, and rotten state institutions all take a high price, but given the authorities' repression of social forces, change is unlikely to be at hand.
What are the major challenges facing Cuba?
Cuba's centrally planned economy has been at a standstill for decades. But over the past five years, the pillars that underpin the island nation's already weak economy have collapsed one after another, leaving the entire country in trouble. First, the authoritarian regime of Venezuela, which had supplied Cuba with cheap oil, had significantly reduced its energy supply because of its mismanagement, which had significantly reduced oil production. Next, conservative and right-wing governments, such as Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and Colombian President Iván Duque, won the stick of power throughout Latin America, ending Cuba's exploitative labor program in which medical workers were sent abroad and paid most of their wages. And in the United States, the Donald Trump administration tightened decades-old sanctions and cut off remittances to Cuba.
Then there's the COVID-19 pandemic. Cuba's 2020 border closure disrupted tourism and led to the second-largest economic contraction in Latin America that year, after Venezuela. But Cuba, unlike its Caribbean neighbors, has never seen a full pick-up in tourism. In October 2022, the number of international visitors was still less than half of the total for the same month in 2019. And while Cuba shifted to allowing some forms of small private enterprise in 2021, progress on other market reforms has stalled. Utter economic dysfunction is one of the main reasons why hundreds of thousands of Cubans leave the island.
What is the situation in Cuba under President Miguel Díaz Canel Bermúdez?
In 2018, Díaz Canel — a lifelong Communist Party insider — succeeded Raúl Castro, the younger brother of revolutionary turned dictator Fidel Castro, as Cuba's president. This marks the first time the Castro family has not held the position. Three years later, Díaz Canel was appointed first secretary of the ruling Communist Party of Cuba. Cuba's already serious mismanagement and dysfunction of government have worsened under his leadership.
In Havana, Cuba, people line up outside to buy foreign currency
In 2021, Diaz-Canel ended nearly 20 years of dual currency system, causing the world's most dramatic currency devaluation. About 70 per cent of Cuba's food is imported, and food prices are soaring in tandem. At the same time, inflation on the island is one of the highest in Latin America and the Caribbean, at about 200 per cent, and inflation in Cuba appears to be falling more slowly than other countries in the region. Like many of his regional neighbors, Díaz Canel's foolish anti-epidemic policies have exposed the fragility of Cuba's health care system, as hospitals are largely out of oxygen and essential medicines.
Widespread dysfunctional government has exacerbated already widespread discontent, but Dias Canel has shown no interest in political liberalization. Instead, he passed a new penal code in May 2022 that further criminalized dissent. The year before, tens of thousands of Cubans took to the streets to take part in a nationwide protest, the country's largest in nearly three decades. Despite a crackdown by Díaz Canel, which imprisoned nearly four hundred demonstrators and restricted access to the internet and social media island-wide, protests erupted again in October 2022 after Hurricane Ian plunged Cuba's deteriorating power grid into a prolonged blackout.
Map of Cuba with important data
How do the March 2023 election results reflect growing discontent among Cubans?
Historically, turnout in Cuba's one-party legislative elections — allowing as many candidates as many seats available in the National Assembly — has typically been as high as 95 percent. State-run media, employers and local government officials pressured Cubans to vote, and if they abstained, they faced consequences. Even so, on March 26, a quarter of Cubans abstained, either soiled or left blank: the only means by which they voted against the regime.
More notably, overall turnout dropped by 10% compared to the last National Assembly vote in 2018. Likewise, the new family law referendum on the legalization of same-sex marriage in September 2022 and the municipal elections in November 2022 both reached new highs. These are signs that Cubans are increasingly willing to defy pressure and participate in the legitimization of the regime. On 19 April, 459 of the 462 legislators present in the National Assembly approved Díaz Canel's new five-year term.
Is it possible to change?
While mass protests and record abstention rates are indicative of widespread discontent within Cuba, Cuba's repressive one-party system has closed all avenues for bottom-up change. Cubans are more likely to continue voting with their feet as they seek to escape economic chaos and oppression. In this largest wave of Cuban immigration in decades, about 374,000 Cubans, or about 3% of the island's population, have been detained at the southern border of the United States since fiscal year 2021. The journey north became easier after Nicaragua announced in November 2021 that it would lift visa requirements for Cuban nationals, a move that appeared to serve the Cuban regime and open a pressure valve of discontent.
In addition, the infiltration of Cuba's dense national intelligence network into local institutions and civil society, as well as the threat of prolonged imprisonment for political activities, make it difficult for Cubans to organize. Still, the island's multiple crises, combined with unprecedented power transitions from the regime's founders to Díaz Canel's generation, could provoke further instability and dissent.