The Cuban economist Orlando Plá Tomás, residing in Mexico, identified two conditions that he considers essential for initiating any economic recovery in Cuba: ensuring property rights and securing the freedom of action for economic agents. He discussed this in an interview with Tania Costa, in which he analyzed possible solutions to the crisis facing the island.
"There is an initial structure which is property and another fundamental element which is freedom," Plá stated. "These two elements are essential to begin designing an economic recovery. The structure of property rights must be clear, and the freedom of action of economic agents must also be clear."
To support his thesis, the economist resorted to a heterodox reading of Marx's historical materialism. In this way, he argued that the very sequence of modes of production described by Marx implicitly demonstrates that "productivity is directly proportional to the freedom of productive forces." Thus, he contended that "feudalism is more productive than slavery, and capitalism is more productive than feudalism."
Based on this logic, Plá concluded that "communism constitutes an economic regression because it precisely limits the freedom of productive forces," which makes the prevailing system in Cuba a structural obstacle to any real growth.
The analysis by Plá aligns with the findings of the 2024 Nobel Prize winners in Economics —Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James A. Robinson—, who demonstrated that institutions that protect property and economic freedom are the determining factor in the development of nations. “If there are strong institutions that defend these two elements [...] there are possibilities for growth,” the economist pointed out, also referencing the historical example of Venice to illustrate how progress flourishes when both conditions are respected “and how that progress comes to an end if the structure changes.”
As contemporary empirical evidence, Plá mentioned Norway: "Greater freedom, greater wealth," he summarized.
This diagnosis carries weight in the context of the most severe crisis Cuba has faced in decades. At the beginning of the year, CEPAL projected a contraction of the Cuban GDP of 6.5% in 2026 — the worst in Latin America — while the Economist Intelligence Unit estimates a decline of 7.2%. The accumulated contraction since 2019 ranges between 23% and 26%.
In June 2026, the National Assembly of People's Power approved a package of 176 economic measures that includes private banking, the removal of the limit of 100 workers for Mipymes, and greater openness to foreign investment. However, Plá believes that these reforms are unfeasible without a profound systemic change, as the regime has spent nearly seven decades destroying precisely the two foundations that would now be necessary for their implementation: trust and institutions.
Other independent economists, such as Elías Amor and Pedro Monreal, have reached similar conclusions regarding the inadequacy of the measures without deeper structural reforms.
"We see how there has been progress when these two things are respected and how that progress ends if the structure changes," concluded Plá, summarizing in a single sentence both the diagnosis of the Cuban failure and the minimum condition to reverse it.
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