Recent months have seen Cuba’s new president, Miguel Diaz-Canel, busy establishing the framework for what he hopes Cuban historians will one day call the Diaz-Canel Era. Central to this has been the adoption of a new constitution for Cuba. In some respects the document is ‘business as usual’, reaffirming socialism as ‘irrevocable’ in the Communist Party of Cuba’s platform for the island nation. However, it also offers some notable changes — ones which signify a shift in mindset by Cuba’s authoritarian rulers, as well as, potentially, a new opportunity for the people of Cuba and their economy. Let’s detail this now in-depth.
Cuba Throughout the Decades
In the three decades since the conclusion of the Cold War, the Cuban government has experienced an era of stagnation at home, and isolation on the world stage. With the collapse of the USSR, Havana lost its closest and most powerful ally and, as the Soviet Union collapsed, the curtains fell on any chance that a communist revolution would remake the world.
The Cuban government remained largely stubborn in its global view, with little to no interest in mending bridges or opening up its economy; but that changed when the February 24 referendum saw a new constitution enacted. The outcome of the vote came as no surprise given that Diaz-Canel wanted it — and therefore got it! This updated constitution sets Cuba’s economy on a new path, one where even the current occupant of the president’s office and other senior officials of the Communist Party of Cuba cannot know all of the outcomes ahead.
Free to Do Business
Central to the new constitution is the recognition of private business, non-farming co-operatives and the free market. Recognition is not the same as embrace, with the new document reaffirming the one-party state, and the right of government to wield its power over the economy at will.
Just as the fall of the Berlin Wall showed in 1989, once an opening is established, it can be hard to shut it, especially against the popular will of the people. The Cuban government must also contend with a future where not only are economies globalising, but the individual freedom that people enjoy in working, investing and travelling is increasing.
Cuba’s government may point to China as a great example of economic growth with centralised control, and take inspiration from it, but China is also home to a robust, virtual private network that citizens use to get around internet censorship. So, although Beijing may have attempted to build, with the Great Firewall of China, something in the digital age that replicates its famous landmark, the reality is that the current penalty for using a VPN in China can be as low as a simple fine of US$145. Even those with proven form in building an authoritarian state, know that keeping a free internet under wraps is all but impossible.
Given that Cubans see, with the internet, a capacity to communicate online, do business online, and even park funds in a foreign country online, then the Cuban government, ultimately, will have to change its economy to be receptive to this new economic understanding, or continually lose out to the underground economy as a result.
With the past year seeing private wi-fi legalised in Cuba, and the 3G mobile network arriving in December 2018, it appears that the Cuban government recognises it must open its economy more. This is to be commended but the pace of this change should be criticised; a satisfaction with incremental domestic steps in a decade of rapid global innovation does a disservice to the Cuban people, especially those in most need of new economic pathways.
Beyond the Constitution
Few countries can cite such an eventful few years in their national story as can Cuba. Recent history saw revolutionary hero Fidel Castro resign, his brother Raul ascend, Raul thereafter resign; and throughout this period the establishment and then revocation of normalised US-Cuba diplomatic relations by Washington.
Looking to the future, Cuba’s government faces two inescapable problems. Firstly, for all the flaws that do exist in the free market economy (and recent years have shown some of those flaws in substantial ways), it remains a system that has lifted more people out of poverty than any other. One need not look to a democratic nation for an example of this, but to China. When it comes to foreign and social policy, the Communist Party of China has sought to retain an iron grip on its people but, over forty years ago, the Deng Reforms brought a shift to a free market economic system, and thereafter millions were lifted out of poverty as a result. C
