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The XI Plenary Session of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) is taking place this Saturday amid an unprecedented economic crisis, growing social discontent, and a political process characterized by secrecy, pretense, and propaganda.
Far from being a genuine space for deliberation or self-critique, this assembly—reduced to a one-day video conference—has become a maneuver for political and communicational control, designed to maintain the facade of unity around the regime while in practice deep structural changes that benefit the ruling elites and deepen inequality and social injustice are being consolidated.
An emergency session in a country on the brink of collapse
The reduction of the plenary session to a single virtual day is itself a symbol of the crisis.
Although the Political Bureau justified the measure with the argument of "reducing expenses" and "keeping officials in their territories," it actually reflects the material and political inability of the State to even sustain its own power rituals.
The highest body of the Party —which should be a space for leadership and strategic analysis— has been reduced to a controlled digital connection, lacking real debate or public presence.
The same trend is observed in the National Assembly of the People's Power, which will also meet this month for only one day and via videoconference, repeating the pattern of institutional reduction and loss of democratic formality even within the dictatorship itself.
In practice, both the Party and the Parliament have become symbolic arenas, used to validate decisions previously made by the small circle surrounding Raúl Castro and the leadership of GAESA.
The context: A legalized dollarization and institutionalized inequality
The meeting takes place just a week after the enactment of Decree-Law 113/2025, which legalizes the partial dollarization of the economy and establishes a multi-currency system under state control.
The Minister of Economy, Joaquín Alonso Vázquez, presented the text as a “technical update,” but the content shows that it is a direct continuation of the model established by Alejandro Gil Fernández, the disgraced former minister who has been judged for corruption and espionage.
The decree establishes a “foreign currency management and allocation system” where the Ministry of Economy and Planning (MEP) and the Central Bank (BCC) determine who can operate in dollars, under what conditions, and with what limits.
In practice, it institutionalizes the segmentation of the economy: one for authorized participants (state-owned enterprises, investors, Mipymes linked to power) and another, impoverished and devalued, for the rest of the population that survives on Cuban pesos.
What the regime sells as "rational ordering" is actually a disguised neoliberal reform, which shifts the costs of the crisis onto the ordinary citizen while concentrating control of the currency in the hands of the State and the military conglomerate GAESA.
Instead of eliminating dollarization, as promised by the 2021 Ordering Task, Decree 113 legalizes, reinforces, and regulates it to the benefit of those in power.
A state that diminishes for the people and shields itself for the elites
The XI Plenary takes place while the structure of the State is shrinking, not in its repressive or propagandistic apparatus, but in its public function.
The elimination of physical spaces, the virtualization of political bodies, and the lack of transparent information regarding budgets, exchange rates, or inflation figures highlight a process of authoritarian recentralization, where decisions are made in the shadows, without accountability or citizen participation.
The discourse of austerity is, in reality, a cover for the retraction of power towards the narrower circles of the Party and the military-economic apparatus.
The institutions that once served to legitimize internal consensus now simulate activity while true power is concentrated outside of them. The result: a State that does not govern, but instead manages social control.
Propaganda, unanimity, and the manufacturing of consensus
The text published by the official journalist Angélica Paredes under the title “In the XI Plenary of the Central Committee, the Agenda of Cuba will be addressed” repeats the same empty phrases that have been heard for over half a century: “unity of the people,” “sacred principles of the Revolution,” “resistance against the blockade.”
There are no figures, no data, nor mention of the true problems: rampant inflation, the devaluation of the peso, migration exodus, or productive paralysis. The aim of that narrative is not to inform but to reinforce the fiction of national unanimity.
The Party presents itself as "the moral compass of the nation," when in reality it has become an instrument of propaganda to drape a depleted totalitarian system in solemnity.
Today's plenary will not discuss solutions: it will reproduce the performance of obedience.
The regime's media strategy is clear: while the country sinks into economic chaos, Granma and Cubadebate launch campaigns about "the dignity of Cuba" and "socialist human rights," which have turned into viral memes as the population mocks the contrast between the rhetoric and reality.
Official propaganda seeks to rekindle the emotional connection with the myth of the Revolution, but what it achieves is to highlight the gap between those in power and the streets.
A strategic mutation for survival
Behind this institutional charade lies a deeper operation: the regime is mutating to survive.
The legalization of dollarization, control over access to foreign currency, the virtualization of political power, and the intensive use of propaganda shape a model of technocratic authoritarianism that seeks economic stability without political openness.
It is the shift from an ideological dictatorship to a management dictatorship, where socialism is used as a moral brand, but the economic practice follows a logic of corporate control and structural inequality.
While the people bear the brunt of inflation, blackouts, and shortages, the elites of the Party and the GAESA military complex capture the only profitable circuits in the country: tourism, remittances, foreign currency, and foreign trade.
The revolutionary language serves as a façade for a restructuring of power in an oligarchic manner, where the State ceases to be a redistributor and becomes a collector.
A full house without the people
The XI Plenary of the Central Committee of the PCC is not a debate, but rather a façade of legitimacy.
While propaganda invokes "unity" and "principles," Cubans live with salaries that are insufficient, in an increasingly unequal country without a future.
The supposed "moral compass" of the Party no longer points to the future, but to the survival of power. Today, December 13, 2025, Cuba is attending a virtual meeting of emptiness, where people speak in the name of the populace but without the populace.
A plenary that does not correct distortions, but rather turns them into state policy. A plenary that does not revive the economy, but instead reinforces the lie. And a Party that, incapable of transforming reality, merely manages the faith of those who still believe in a myth that no longer exists.
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