The architect Ileana Pérez Drago, an expert in colonial restoration who worked for the Office of the Historian of Havana, points out a structural and ideological contradiction of the Cuban regime that, in her own words, "doesn't hold up for even a second": blaming the U.S. embargo for all the country's ills while adopting an economic model that, in theory, should be completely independent of Western capitalism.
Pérez Drago explains that the CAME —Council for Mutual Economic Assistance, created by Stalin in 1949— was specifically designed to provide a coherent economic alternative to capitalism.
"If you're considering creating an alternative society, you will need to have an economic alternative of that kind," says the architect.
According to her, that is where the fundamental incoherence lies: "There is a systemic incoherence in the Cuban dictatorship, which is to say that the problems of Cuba are due to the United States embargo, and really, if a different option than capitalism is taken, it wouldn’t make sense to talk about embargoes or anything related to the United States, because you are supposed to have gotten into a different vehicle with a much better option."
The contradiction becomes more pronounced when it is observed that the regime simultaneously relies on the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, institutions primarily funded by Washington.
"How are you going to need money from the IMF and the World Bank, which are funds primarily financed by the United States, which you declare is your enemy because you are also expelling it from the country?" asks Pérez Drago.
The architect sums it up with a powerful image: "You are going to undertake a different new project, and you want the person you voted for to provide you with the funds to finance your project. In other words, if you put it that way, it doesn’t hold up for even a second, not for a second."
Pérez Drago laments that this debate rarely reaches its central point. "Sometimes there is so much talk about the embargo, the blockade, and so on, but the key point is not made clear, which is to say that this is incoherent, this is totally incoherent," he emphasizes.
The architect reserves her harshest words for Fidel Castro and his decision to maintain the socialist project after the Soviet collapse. Cuba joined the CMEA in 1972 and relied on subsidies from the USSR amounting to between 4,000 and 6,000 million dollars annually, which came to represent up to 20% of the Cuban GDP. When the bloc dissolved in June 1991, all member countries chose to declare themselves capitalist and turn to the IMF.
Castro was the exception, and this, according to Pérez Drago, was a historical irresponsibility. "Fidel Castro was very irresponsible in dismantling the CAME and witnessing the fall of the Soviet Union while saying 'I will carry on,' as this people were sinking into the sea. He was very irresponsible because he had no project, no plan, and no one to finance anything for him."
That decision precipitated the Special Period, one of the deepest traumas in Cuba's recent history, with a GDP drop of up to 35% between 1990 and 1994. Decades later, Díaz-Canel himself has acknowledged that Cuba is reliving the tough years of that period, while many Cubans on the island believe that the current situation is worse than the Special Period itself.
Pérez Drago concludes his reasoning with a phrase that summarizes decades of official narrative: "All the countries of the CAME went to the International Monetary Fund and declared themselves capitalists. And he said no, because he owns an island with 11 million slaves who are trying to leave all the time."
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