Official U.S. report holds the regimes of Cuba and Venezuela accountable for their own economic crises

The United States government blamed the regimes of Cuba and Venezuela on Monday for the economic collapse they are facing.

In a text published by ShareAmerica, the official platform of the State Department, Havana and Caracas are directly accused of maintaining authoritarian models designed to benefit the elites in power, to the detriment of the well-being of their peoples.

“The crisis is not imported. It is manufactured,” states the document, which rejects the usual arguments of regimes about sanctions, blockades, or external pressures.

For Washington, the true causes are decades of corruption, poor economic management, and deliberate policies aimed at political control and the enrichment of the ruling elite.

In the Cuban case, the report indicates that in 2024 the regime allocated over 37% of its total investment to the tourism and hotel sector, a figure that exceeds the combined investment in health and education by more than eleven times.

This occurs amid a severe shortage of medicines, food, electricity, and fuels.

The agency EFE, cited as a source, reports that most hotels remain empty, with an average occupancy rate of around 30%, while the government continues the construction of new tourist complexes.

The main beneficiaries of these resources, according to the text, are military conglomerates such as GAESA, FINCIMEX, and CIMEX, entities that dominate the tourism, remittances, and retail sectors on the island, and that do not serve the public interest but rather that of the regime's elite.

The document warns that these assets could be privatized in favor of the same officials who currently control them, repeating the pattern seen during the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Regarding Venezuela, the report states that in the early months of 2024, during the presidential electoral process, Nicolás Maduro's regime spent over 2 billion dollars, marking its highest spending rate of the year.

Despite the fact that during that same period the State collected 1.7 billion in taxes, the minimum wage remained below 2 dollars a month, less than the cost of a kilogram of cheese.

That same year, the regime announced a national budget of $20.5 billion supposedly intended for economic growth.

However, only 180 million dollars (less than 1%) were allocated to the health sector. In contrast, around 1 billion were directed towards military intelligence, especially in counterintelligence technology used to suppress the population and monitor the armed forces themselves.

Only 18 million dollars were allocated to feed more than five million students, which amounts to 3.49 dollars per student per year.

The report also mentions corruption and the deterioration of infrastructure. A $7.5 billion railway agreement signed with China in 2009 has not yielded tangible progress, although Venezuela continues to pay the debt with oil at a reduced price.

In 2024, a blackout left 16 Venezuelan states without electricity, followed by another that affected 20 states for more than 12 hours, according to reports from the local media El Impulso.

The document asserts that these are not accidental failures or administrative errors, but rather structural characteristics of systems designed to sustain the absolute power of the regimes.

While millions of Cubans and Venezuelans face daily shortages, government elites prioritize projects for political control, propaganda, and personal enrichment.

The United States urged the international community to actively denounce the authoritarianism, corruption, and nepotism that characterize both regimes, and called for amplifying the voices of citizens who demand health, food, electricity, education, and economic freedom.

"The Cuban and Venezuelan peoples are resourceful and resilient, but no amount of ingenuity can overcome systems that prioritize power and propaganda over collective well-being," the report concludes.

Frequently Asked Questions about the Economic Crisis in Cuba and Venezuela