HAVANA, Cuba. – If anyone needed more evidence that the regime was behind the little campaign against the dollar on social media, now the Cuban prime minister has suddenly given them some, as well as several buckets of cold water to the same “SMEs” who “backed him up” imagining that they would be allowed to line their pockets with money as a reward for their “obedience.”
They failed to distinguish, once again, between “untouchables” and “disposables” in an economic scenario historically characterized by these “outbursts” of an elite never willing to share either power or money with anyone who does not come from its own caste, regardless of laws and decrees, promises and contracts. In the end, they all fulfill this function of “enchantment”, of siren song, of camouflage for the real bad intentions.
Now I know of a few who are crying and paying for their “hazing”, regretting the hour in which they trusted some guys who, if there is one thing they have become experts at, are turning the wheel with the sole purpose of looting the pockets of both the naive and the “smart guys”, the innocent and the guilty, because when it comes to getting hold of other people’s money, the communists make no distinction, and that is the “golden rule” that any “entrepreneur” should keep in mind before investing his money in Cuba.
In just over a week, while they advance with evident desperation towards the dollarization of the economy (yes, the same ones who have criticized so much Javier Milei In Argentina, not only has the forced closure of more than fifty establishments been announced SMEs but also the withdrawal of import licenses from about a third of the private companies that were authorized to do so, thereby concretizing the witch hunt that many warned about at the beginning of so much enthusiasm, when the unusual benevolence of an ultra-bureaucratic regime that did not put any obstacles in the way of the creation of MSMEs became too suspicious.
And this offensive is just the beginning of something that will soon get worse, judging by how excited and joyful the people are. “cyberclarias” with the issue of expropriations, of million-dollar fines and years of jail time for “bad” SMEs, as well as with tariffs and taxes in dollars for “good” SMEs, who, knowing that they are under the protection of power, care very little about the currency in which they are charged, if in the end they all come out of Liborio’s pocket.
The “cyber-clarias” are as agitated as the river in which they swim. And it is time for the old fishermen to harvest again, who are precisely the same ones who cast their nets when the dollar was penalized, and then when it was decriminalized, and later when it was taxed, and shortly after when they said they “had too many” stagnant in the vaults “because of the blockade,” and in the midst of that “back and forth” with the “enemy’s” banknotes they have left more than one person with an empty wallet.
They have been experts in sudden embezzlement since long before that offensive against the “free peasant market” of the 80s, and long before the Chilean scandal. Max Marambio and the Río Zaza company. One could even say that embezzlement, taking what belongs to others, expropriation is in the essence of the system as it is a manifestation of the violence that defines it and that, to a large extent, is an expression of the refusal to share power, much less with upstarts.
If the “SMEs” who have left (or been taken out) the game have committed any sin, it is not because of naivety (none of them are that innocent) but because of forgetfulness, which, in some cases, was a consequence of that fantasy or trauma that those who emigrate carry with them with the dream of returning one day as “successful” to that place from which they escaped because of a misery that is systemic, and therefore there is no way to remedy it. Not if the remedy they propose is to strengthen the system, injecting capital into it, and not to change it radically.
The regime knows about these traumas and uses them to its advantage because it also knows about our proverbial forgetfulness. That is why it does not care about those Resolution 176 of 2021 of the Central Bank of Cuba where he prohibited the entry of dollars (alleging serious damages due to the embargo) nor banking which until yesterday was the sequel to every speech.
Today, when rubles and yuan take too long to fall so easily — despite nuclear submarines and alleged spy bases— the “combat order” is to comb your hair but at the same time to make “green” papers, that is, to dollarize, to dollarize even if tomorrow they decide otherwise. After all, they have already experienced these swings and they have accustomed us to them.
OPINION ARTICLE
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