Related videos:
The Cuban comedian and actor Ulises Toirac published a critical reflection this Friday on the economic reform package announced by Miguel Díaz-Canel, in which he posed a question that encapsulates decades of contradictions within the system: “Is any flag of socialism being lowered?”.
Toirac pointed directly to Marino Murillo Jorge —whom he referred to as "the czar of tobacco" because of his position at the helm of Tabacuba— as the same official who 15 years ago designed the Guidelines for Economic and Social Policy.
Known at the time as "the tsar of the Guidelines," Murillo Jorge was the "architect" of the major reformist project of the regime approved at the VI Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) in 2011, which today is hindered by inadequate attempts at various "government programs to correct distortions and revitalize the economy."
"The problem is not circumstantial. Reforms are just that: reforms," Toirac wrote in his post on Facebook, before noting that those Guidelines, the result of ten years of study, "could have changed something" if they had arrived on time, but "they come too late today."
Toirac also recalled that those who proposed solutions of the same caliber back then "were labeled as enemies or mercenaries," making the current announcement a contradiction that is hard to sustain for its own authors.
If these measures align with the 'system', they should have been the reforms back then. Even more 'audacious' ones, like the ones that are sure to come next month when these don't generate the necessary reaction,” the comedian remarked, highlighting a contradiction that poses a logical trap with no way out for the regime.
After pointing out that there have been many opportunities for reform and that, at best, the measures now announced by the first secretary of the PCC "have come too late and reluctantly," Toirac concluded: "This makes me think that, being the authors of both this and that, they are not going to work today either."
The actor also dismantled Díaz-Canel's emphasis on attracting Cuban diaspora entrepreneurs, warning that this sector is already "scared" and that foreign investors who had invested in previous times "ended up suffering from the unpaid debt," left, and today "do not plan to return."
The harshest diagnosis from the text pointed to the real cause of the reforms: «The scenario of a possible social explosion and its consequences under current circumstances is the reason for these reforms». It further added: «People are not tired or exhausted. People are DESPERATE».
The tension that Toirac points out has a concrete constitutional basis: Article 4 of the Cuban Constitution of 2019 declares that «the socialist system endorsed by this Constitution is irrevocable», and Article 229 prohibits amending that declaration.
If the business autonomy, opening to private investment, and legalization of activities are incompatible with socialism, the regime would be doing exactly what its own Constitution prohibits.
The economist Pedro Monreal noted in May that Cuba has missed the train of the reforms in China and Vietnam, the very models that Díaz-Canel referred to when presenting his program.
The history of the Guidelines —approved in 2011, updated in 2016, recognized as a failure in 2023— suggests that Toirac's question is not rhetorical.
Filed under: