The political analyst José Manuel González Rubines published an article this Friday on CubaxCuba that highlights the central contradiction of the Cuban regime: while it dismantles its socialist economic model piece by piece, it preserves the political power monopoly intact as the only line it never negotiates.
The text stems from the reforms approved by the National Assembly at the end of July and leads to a thesis that shakes six decades of official discourse: "socialism was never the ultimate goal of the system, but rather the chosen instrument to maintain power."
The measures motivating the analysis are of considerable depth. With the repeal of Decree 107 and the entry into force of Decree 160 on August 4, the government eliminated 46 of the 125 activities prohibited for the private sector and relaxed 35 more, within a total package of 176 transformations grouped into 23 axes.
Among the changes are the opening of pharmaceutical services and nursing homes to small and medium enterprises and cooperatives, the liberalization of wholesale trade, and the authorization to privately import electric vehicles. Prime Minister Manuel Marrero also announced the first private currency exchange, the first mixed enterprise between foreign capital and a small and medium enterprise, and a fully foreign investment zone for health tourism.
González Rubines points out that these measures dismantle the state monopoly over the economy, which was the core of the model designed by Fidel Castro. The same State that imprisoned people for holding foreign currency has begun transferring to private entities the cafeterias of the Family Assistance System, which means part of the support to the most vulnerable sectors.
In light of this reality, President Miguel Díaz-Canel insists that “we are not going to establish a predatory capitalism or a mass privatization of national assets.” For the analyst, that denial “smells like a confession”: the outcome is not a transition to a free market democracy, but a hybrid model in which economic liberalization is subordinated to the political monopoly. “The worst of Latin American capitalism has been grafted onto the trunk of Cuban totalitarianism,” he writes.
The economic opening, however, has a precise and deliberate limit. For non-state actors, the publication of newspapers, books, and magazines; news agencies; independent journalism; television programming; and non-state formal education remain prohibited. Nothing that could build an independent public sphere has been liberalized.
This coherence is not coincidental, asserts González Rubines: it is precisely what ensures the preservation of power. The reforms also clash with the Cuban Constitution itself: Article 4 declares the socialist system irrevocable, Article 16 prohibits negotiating under coercion, and Article 229 renders both unchangeable and irreformable.
The backdrop is the human cost of the crisis. Marrero admitted that 73% of hotel facilities remain closed and that 25,000 tourism workers lost their jobs, estimating that 876,522 people are "in greater vulnerability." The Cuban Observatory of Human Rights estimates that over 89% of the population —more than eight and a half million Cubans— live in extreme poverty.
In light of this situation, González Rubines asks what remains of anti-imperialism when the regime is willing to allow that "Mr. Trump himself might even invest" in Cuba if it ensures the survival of the system. He raises the most uncomfortable question: "What is truly questionable and even painful is that if these measures were possible and are now presented as a lifeline, why were they denied for decades?"
The allegiance that persists among the regime's defenders, the analyst concludes, can no longer be explained as a defense of socialism, popular welfare, or sovereignty. "The Revolution functions more as a symbol than as a political project that can be evaluated by its outcomes," he writes. The only thing that remains off the table for negotiation is the monopoly on power: evidence, according to González Rubines, that socialism was always the means, never the end.
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