Díaz-Canel's measures: too late, too poorly, too little

This Friday, June 12, Díaz-Canel appeared before the microphones of the official press with a package of "economic reforms" which he presented as a sign that the regime is willing to change. "The country cannot continue to function the same way," he said. He is right in his diagnosis. But what he announced is not the cure. It is, as so many times before, a painkiller administered to a patient in need of surgery.

The timing says it all. These measures are not announced in a moment of thoughtful calm or as a result of a vision for the country. They are announced days after Marco Rubio imposed new sanctions against CUPET, the Cuban state oil company, and hours after the Secretary of Defense of the United States made statements from Guantanamo Naval Base. It is not reform. It is reaction.

The usual pattern

The regime in Cuba has been repeating the same cycle for 65 years: acute crisis, announcement of opening, minimal controlled concession, recovery of oxygen, and closure once again. We saw this in the 1990s with the so-called "special period." We observed it in 2010 with Raúl Castro's reforms and during Obama's "opening." We witnessed it in 2021, when the "ordering task" was only partially implemented and triggered devastating inflation because the fundamental reforms needed to sustain it were never made.

Now they are loosening the reins a bit again. And they do it, as always, just enough to avoid collapsing, not to grow.

What they announced and what it means

The package has seven axes. It's worth reading them carefully, because the devil is in the details that Díaz-Canel did not provide.

1. In tourism, the regime speaks of allowing "new players" to operate the hotel sector. The underlying issue is that major foreign chains—Meliá, Iberostar—have either fully or partially withdrawn from Cuba to avoid U.S. sanctions. The State needs someone to operate those vacant hotels. This is not an openness initiative; it is a management problem disguised as reform.
2. State enterprises would gain "autonomy" to directly import and export, retain part of the foreign currency generated, and partner with other actors. On paper, it sounds like decentralization. In practice, that autonomy exists only to the extent that the Party allows, and no decree changes that.
3. The importers, state-owned companies that are required to intermediate all foreign trade, would be eliminated. This is an implicit acknowledgment that those structures are a burden. However, removing them without establishing a clear legal framework for private commerce merely shifts the bottleneck.
4. Farmers were promised direct access to supplies, accounts backed by real cash, and participation in the currency market. Cuba imports nearly 80% of the food it consumes despite being a fertile island. If this were truly implemented, it would be urgent and necessary. However, the land market remains closed: without stable long-term ownership or leasing, no one is willing to invest in agriculture.
5. In the real estate sector, Díaz-Canel spoke of "new modalities" and "new actors" without providing any details. It is the emptiest announcement of the package.
6. Cuban residents living abroad are offered "the same conditions" as those residing on the island for investment. The problem, as we will see, is that these conditions do not yet exist on legal paper.
7. Finally, the ministries will be reduced from 27 to 20. This is the most concrete measure of the day, and also the most irrelevant for the average citizen.

What remains unsaid

What is most revealing about Díaz-Canel's statements is not what he announced, but what he did not mention.

1. No measures address the monopoly that the military conglomerate GAESA holds over foreign exchange, tourism, imports, and distribution. Any "new player" entering the Cuban market will collide with that wall. There is no possible competition when the referee of the game is also the player with the most chips.
2. There is no unified and stable exchange rate that allows any company to make real calculations. There is no access to private credit. There is no reliable property registry. Under these conditions, no serious investor is willing to enter. And Cubans who start businesses do so knowing that what the State gives them today can be taken away tomorrow, by decree, without compensation or legal recourse.
3. There is no stable or predictable regulatory framework. There are no reliable economic statistics that allow anyone—inside or outside the island—to understand the real state of the country.
4. There is also not a single word about legal security. There has been no announcement of binding international arbitration, nor an independent tribunal for disputes between investors and the State, nor a compensation mechanism in the event of expropriation or unilateral cancellation of contracts. Cuba has a long history on all these fronts, and nothing in today's package addresses them. Any reformist decree that does not resolve this is literally "up in the air," subject to the political will of the moment.
5. The regime has neither lifted the de facto financial clampdown affecting the accounts of foreign companies, nor has it presented a timeline for normalizing the repatriation of dividends. There is no transparent exchange rate system: with multiple rates coexisting amidst high inflation, no one can calculate at what exchange rate they will convert their profits or if they will be able to take them out of the country.
6. The case of the emigrated investor illustrates well this gap between rhetoric and reality. Díaz-Canel announced that Cubans abroad would have "the same conditions" as those residing on the island to invest. However, the regulatory changes that would make this possible—including migratory modifications associated with a hypothetical "resident investor" category—have not appeared in the Official Gazette. Without publication in the Gazette, there is no legal validity. It is an announcement without legal backing, and no one has explained what would happen to the assets of an emigrant who comes into political conflict with the regime or loses their migratory status.

The underlying problem

The Cuban economy is not broken by accident nor solely due to the U.S. embargo. It is broken by design: it is the predictable result of six decades of a system that prioritizes political control over wealth creation. Reforming this in a meaningful way is not just about tweaking some regulations. It is about dismantling the architecture of power.

Díaz-Canel and the Communist Party don't want to do that, do they? Not because they can't imagine it, but because doing so would mean relinquishing control, which underpins their entire hegemony. That’s why every reform comes with a safety valve: the State gives, and the State can take away. Always.

For Cubans who have been living for years without stable electricity, without medicines, and without hope, these measures come too late and are far too little. As always.