There is something profoundly revealing in the latest economic transformation announced by the Cuban regime.
It's not just that a communist government allows private banking, joint-stock companies, foreign investment in private businesses, greater business autonomy, and other mechanisms characteristic of a market economy.
The truly striking issue that best captures the nature of power in the Cuban totalitarian system is another one: who is held accountable when the reforms fail?
In Cuba, the answer always seems to be the same: nobody relinquishes power. The Communist Party diagnoses the problem, designs the solution, implements it, later acknowledges its “distortions,” designs another solution, and once again presents itself as the only force qualified to execute it.
And the citizens observe the experiment without possessing the essential instrument that a democratic society would have to judge its results: to vote for another government.
Fifteen years "updating" the model
The 176 measures announced now are not the beginning of Cuba's shift towards the market. That shift has been in the making for years.
In 2011, under the leadership of Raúl Castro, the VI Congress of the PCC approved the Guidelines for Economic and Social Policy. In 2017, the communist regime decided it was time for a «» of the same Guidelines that had failed in their implementation.
Reforms needed to be introduced, accepting certain forms of non-state management, granting space to the market, and addressing structural issues, but without jeopardizing socialism.
Just a year after that decision, the then-ruling Castro and first secretary of the PCC appointed Díaz-Canel as his successor, marking the beginning of the disastrous economic management undertaken by the government of the so-called "continuity."
Three months after inheriting the presidency, Miguel the "continuator" wanted to clear up any doubts: "In Cuba, there are no, nor will there be, capitalist turns".
After that came the Ordering Task. Then it was necessary to "organize the Ordering". Later, Díaz-Canel acknowledged that they needed to analyze "where we might have gone wrong" and "what we could have done wrong".
The situation doesn't stop there. Then came the promise to "rectify". Next, it was necessary to "correct distortions and reinvigorate the economy". Now we have 176 measures that significantly deepen the role of the market, private enterprise, and foreign capital.
Update, organize, reorder, rectify, correct, reinvigorate, and reform again.
Names change. The Party never decides.
The privilege of being wrong without losing power
Any government can make mistakes. It can also radically change its economic policy. Correcting course should not be a reason for reproach when the alternative is to persist in a mistake.
The Cuban problem is another. In a democracy, a government that promises a policy, achieves poor results, and ends up implementing practically the opposite must eventually face the judgment of the citizens.
It can explain what went wrong. The opposition can hold you accountable for the failure and offer an alternative. Economists with different plans can become candidates. Parties can confront proposals, and citizens decide which ones they want to try.
The ruler can lose. And that last possibility changes everything.
Because accountability is not just about a president acknowledging mistakes on television. It also involves the possibility of political consequences for having made those mistakes.
In Cuba, that possibility is closed.
The Communist Party can design the model, manage its outcomes, correct it, and redesign it because no other party can compete electorally to replace it in government.
The PCC thus has an extraordinary privilege: it can fail without risking power.
The same ones who create the "distortions" promise to correct them
The official Cuban language is particularly revealing.
For years, we have heard about "distortions" that need to be corrected as if they had appeared spontaneously in the economy. But who was in power when they occurred?
Who designed the Tarea Ordenamiento? Who established the exchange rate? Who managed the state business system for decades? Who decided what a private entity could import, what they could sell, how much they could grow, or who they could partner with?
It was not a liberal government. It was not private entrepreneurs. It was not an opposition party that won an election and implemented a flawed program for four years.
It was the same State led by the same Communist Party that now presents itself to the Cuban people with a new program to "correct distortions."
The formula is extraordinary: power simultaneously becomes the creator of the problem, the judge of its results, and the sole responsible party for the upcoming solution.
Managed capitalism by communists
And this is how we arrive at the paradox of 2026: the regime needs more market, but does not want to call it capitalism.
It needs private capital. It needs foreign investment. It needs non-state enterprises. It needs economic incentives. It needs financial and business mechanisms that for decades have been associated through its own propaganda with capitalism.
Díaz-Canel now admits that recovery will be a task "for both state and non-state enterprises, along with other forms of economic management." But he immediately establishes from power what their destination should be: "Focused on a single goal: building prosperous and sustainable socialism".
There lies the entire contradiction: you can be a private owner, invest capital, and operate within the market, but the Party has already decided for you what the "sole purpose" of the economic system you are part of is.
And just in case there were any doubts about who will manage the experiment, Díaz-Canel makes it even clearer: the update will continue «under the leadership of the Communist Party of Cuba» and «without ever renouncing the principles of socialism».
Capitalism can penetrate through the economy. What cannot penetrate is political competition.
Why not let the Cubans decide?
Let's assume that Díaz-Canel is right.
Let’s assume that the 176 measures are exactly what Cuba needs and that a combination of market forces, private enterprise, and socialist leadership will ultimately pull the country out of the crisis.
Why not allow that program to compete with others? Why can't a liberal economist present a deeper market economy project to Cubans? Why can't a social democrat advocate for a different balance between the state and the private sector? Why can't a Christian democrat, a conservative, or any other political movement organize, form a party, present candidates, and seek votes?
Why is the only allowed discussion about how much market the Communist Party accepts within socialism? That is what turns the economic issue into an essentially political one.
It's not about debating whether a society should have more state or more market. Democracies constantly discuss this. It's about who has the right to make that decision.
In Cuba, the PCC reserves that right.
The market can indeed rectify socialism; the ballots cannot
The contradiction extends to Díaz-Canel's very language.
In 2018, he stated: "In Cuba, there are, nor will there be, capitalist turns." In 2026, he says: "It is a process to energize the economy, not to establish capitalism." He adds: "There will be no extreme privatization."
We are no longer facing an absolute denial of the shift. We are dealing with the management of its limits: how much market, how much private property, how much foreign capital, what can be privatized, and to what extent.
Everything can be discussed. Except who has the right to make those decisions.
Díaz-Canel has just reaffirmed in his own speech the "role of the single Party" of the PCC and has assured that it will continue as a "jealous guardian" of the people's interests.
But perhaps after so many economic experiments, the time has come to ask a more fundamental question: who protects the people from the mistakes of their "guardian"?
The correction that Cuba can never attempt
The 176 measures may either succeed or fail. Some are likely necessary, while others might prove insufficient. The market could improve resource allocation in certain areas, and private initiative could generate wealth where the state apparatus has shown significant inefficiencies.
But there is a reform that the regime never includes among its experiments: allowing Cubans to peacefully change their leaders. That would be the true break from the logic of the last 15 years.
Because Cuba does not need its rulers to have the right to amend. It needs its citizens to have the right to replace them.
After the Guidelines, the updates, the Reorganization, the restructuring, the corrections, the distortions, the renewed push, and now the 176 measures, the PCC is asking for another chance to fix an economy it has been governing for decades.
In a democracy, one could request it. And the citizens could grant it. Or they could say no.
That second option is precisely what the Cuban regime is not willing to put on the table.
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