In Cuba, there are no, and will be no, capitalist twists.
Miguel Díaz-Canel pronounced that phrase in July 2018, just three months after assuming the Presidency of Cuba and when he was presenting himself as a "guarantee of continuity" of the system inherited from dictator Fidel Castro and his brother Raúl.
Eight years later, those words are once again relevant.
The Cuban regime has announced 176 measures that significantly expand the scope of market mechanisms, property rights, private initiative, and foreign investment.
Among the transformations, there are joint-stock companies, private banking and exchange houses, foreign investment linked to the non-state sector, greater business autonomy, and new mechanisms for pricing, wages, and relationships among different economic actors.
Díaz-Canel, however, rejects that such an opening can be considered a shift towards capitalism. «We are not renouncing socialism», he insisted when the measures were announced.
And in a recent speech before international representatives of communist and workers' parties, he reaffirmed the limits: "It is a process to energize the economy, not to establish capitalism; there will be no extreme privatization".
The distance between the definitive statement “there are no, and there will be no, capitalist shifts” from 2018 and the need to clarify in 2026 that there will not be “unwavering” privatization summarizes much of the journey undertaken by the Cuban economy.
From Guidelines to Regulation
The current turn did not come out of nowhere.
Their origins date back to the reform process initiated by Raúl Castro, as outlined in the Guidelines for Economic and Social Policy approved by the VI Congress of the Communist Party in 2011.
So, at that time, the regime accepted certain market mechanisms and non-state management forms to "update" an economy with serious structural issues, but it established an ideological boundary: the reforms had to preserve socialism.
Díaz-Canel inherited that process when he assumed the presidency in 2018. Instead of promising a break, he presented himself as "continuity" and categorically dismissed any "capitalist turn."
Three years later, under his administration, the so-called Task Ordering was implemented. The monetary and exchange reform altered salaries, pensions, prices, tariffs, and subsidies, but soon began to reveal serious issues.
Just a few weeks after it came into effect, Díaz-Canel himself admitted: «We need to regulate the Ordering».
In 2023, it became even more explicit. The government stated that they were analyzing "where we may have gone wrong in the Ordering" and "what we could have done incorrectly." The promise then was to "rectify."
Later, another formula arrived: "correct distortions and reinvigorate the economy". And now the 176 measures are coming.
The sequence is hard to ignore: update, organize, organize the organized, rectify, correct distortions, re-energize and reform again.
Meanwhile, Cuba has experienced years of inflation, a depreciation of the peso, the collapse of the electrical system, blackouts, shortages of food and medicine, deterioration of public services, and massive emigration.
Díaz-Canel himself now acknowledges part of the outcome: «Yes, we have many shortcomings. We are overwhelmed by power outages, lack of water, inflation, and long lines».
More market to "build socialism"
Despite the magnitude of the new reforms, Díaz-Canel insists that the ideological objective remains intact.
In his recent speech, he explicitly acknowledged that economic recovery will depend on both state and private enterprises: "Achieving this will be a task for everyone, both state and non-state enterprises, along with other forms of economic management that together make up the Cuban business framework."
But he immediately established the purpose that the regime has for that framework: “Focused on a single goal: ‘to build a prosperous and sustainable socialism.’”
He also described the economic transformation as an "updating" carried out "under the leadership of the Communist Party of Cuba" and "without ever renouncing the principles of socialism."
The paradox is evident: after decades of restrictions on private property and the market, the regime needs to expand its role in an attempt to pull the economy out of crisis, yet it continues to present these tools as instruments aimed at strengthening socialism.
The 176 measures do not automatically convert Cuba into a capitalist economy. The state retains significant economic power, and the government itself rejects any transition to that system.
But it is also not easy to reconcile the economy that Díaz-Canel promised in 2018 with the one he is trying to build in 2026.
The process has been incubating since the Guidelines and has progressed through reforms, setbacks, and successive corrections. What eight years of crisis seem to have changed is the urgency and depth of the concessions to the market.
In 2018, Díaz-Canel stated that there would be no "capitalist turns."
In 2026, it admits more private companies, foreign capital, and market mechanisms; it no longer promises that there will be no privatization, but that it will not be "absolute".
And as the economic script changes, it insists that the objective remains the same: “to build socialism.”
What remains then of that categorical "there will be no capitalist turns"?
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