Who governs in Cuba today?

In Cuba today, there is not a single, coherent bloc in power, but rather a triangle of authority that monitors, competes, and hampers each other while sharing a common obsession: controlling the state, the currency, and society, all while ensuring the primacy of the socialist state enterprise and maintaining the monopoly on the dollars that enter the country.

The opening to the private sector, the promises to “regulate” the currency market or to “modernize” the economy serve, in this context, more as tactical maneuvers than as a paradigm shift: necessary mirages to buy time amid the collapse, without renouncing the dream of returning to a system of stores in foreign currency and remittances funneled exclusively through state and military conglomerates.

The first vertex of this triangle is the political-military elite organized around the GAESA business complex, which controls the FAR, tourism, foreign trade, foreign currency banking, and a significant portion of the official remittances. This bloc does not govern with economic efficiency or citizen welfare in mind; rather, it ensures that no dollar flows without passing through its channels. This accounts for the crackdown on “financiers” networks in exile and parallel remittance schemes that, according to official data, are already moving the vast majority of money that does not come through FINCIMEX or other state entities. The outcome is a system where the elite has lost much of its effective control over remittances; instead of adapting, it seeks to reabsorb them through decrees, media campaigns, and police operations.

The second block is the technocratic-economic apparatus: Central Bank, ministries, and official economists who acknowledge the disaster, talk about a currency market that “doesn’t work” and promise to “regain control of the dollar” with new “flexible” or “more realistic” exchange mechanisms. They explain in official programs and spaces why inflation is skyrocketing, why the peso is collapsing, and why the economy is de facto dollarized, yet they never question the dogma that the state-owned enterprise must remain at the center or GAESA's dominance over the foreign currency economy. Their margin for maneuver is minimal: they propose to “enter the game” of the informal currency market to attract remittances and provide support to small and medium-sized enterprises, while another power vertex literally criminalizes many of the actors sustaining that real market.

The third vertex is the repressive apparatus: Ministry of the Interior, State Security, prosecutor's office, and courts, transformed into an economic arm of repression through investigations for "illegal currency trafficking," "financiers" abroad, and alternative remittance networks that operate between Miami and various provinces in Cuba. The files clearly show how those who capture dollars outside the island and convert them into pesos within Cuba are criminalized; they supply micro, small and medium enterprises with goods imported through non-state means or pay suppliers using parallel payment and import channels, precisely because the official banking system is incapable of doing so efficiently and with liquidity. This apparatus is not designed to solve the crisis but to punish any economic circuit that escapes direct control of the State-GAESA, even though the daily survival of millions of Cubans depends on that circuit.

The three poles converge at two essential points: everyone wants to maintain political power without checks and balances, and everyone considers private enterprise a "necessary evil" that, at best, must exist subordinate to the State, and at worst, can become an enemy if it gains too much autonomy.

From there comes the double narrative: facilities are announced for micro, small, and medium enterprises (mipymes), investments, and wholesale markets, while the informal currency market is pursued with fervor, businesspeople working with financiers are judicially processed, and the foreign currency stores under GAESA control are reinforced, aiming to recentralize remittances and consumption as seen in previous stages of "top-down dollarization." The private sector is tolerated because there is no other source of internal supply, but it is constantly reminded that it exists on borrowed and revocable ground.

The lack of a common policy among the three blocs exacerbates the disaster. The political-military leadership needs foreign currency and some private activity, but it blocks any mechanism that would reduce their control; technocrats speak of "more realistic" exchange markets while the repressive apparatus dismantles those who make them possible; and the population finds itself trapped between devalued pesos, unreachable dollars, and an increasingly aggressive financial repression.

The consequences of this new witch hunt are not going to explode in December: December is already "bought" because the micro, small, and medium enterprises (mipymes) have stocked up for the year-end campaign. The real damage will come afterwards. The interventions by the MININT in the irregular currency market have forced many mipymes to reduce or become compelled to cut back on food imports for the coming year. This will be noticeable in the early months of 2026, when the markets and stores that currently support the overwhelming majority of the supply begin to run low.

There will be the blow: less food, less variety, higher prices, and more desperation. And as long as those in power in Cuba continue to fight for control and dollars, acting without a common direction and without real economic and political openness, the country will remain stuck in the hole: trapped in a permanent crisis that grows increasingly deeper.