Governing means creating the conditions for people to live better, so that they can work, produce and prosper without unnecessary hesitations or obstacles. When daily life becomes a struggle for the basics, asking for more effort without offering concrete solutions demonstrates a problem connecting with current reality.
When I say this, it does not imply that I break up with anything or anyone. Nor is it a discursive turn or a demarcation. It is a position that I have held for years, publicly and consistently.
I do not agree with the recent speech of Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel. The repeated call to sacrifice of a people who already live on the edge, no matter how brave, resilient and understanding they may be, is insufficient for the moment the country is going through. The epic of permanent sacrifice stops being sustained when it is not accompanied by real, measurable and visible changes to achieve new ways of living.
Criticizing is not equivalent to giving up the country or betraying convictions. Giving up on the country would be accepting that Cuba cannot be better.
My convictions are not based on ideologies or political loyalties, nor on the defense of a particular system of government. They go through the aspiration for a better and more prosperous Cuba, for a more open, more plural, more inclusive and more democratic country; for the active pursuit of reconciliation, at least through a substantial improvement in relations between my adopted country and my native country, including the reintegration of its diaspora and the real possibility of returning, contributing and rebuilding.
Continuing with Cuba means, precisely, not giving up that vision and defending that the future stops being a promise always postponed.
In my case, the position becomes more complex because I disagree both with internal decisions that I consider unfair or ineffective and with external policies that have contributed to deepening the daily suffering of the Cuban people. I have done it many times directly and in public settings. It is a right that does not require permission or validation from those who demand absolute definitions.
Economic pressure, as applied today, does not punish an abstract system, it punishes people. To specific families. To mothers, brothers, children, grandparents and friends who survive in constant precariousness. And also to those of us who live abroad, because although we do not suffer daily scarcity, we feel it. We load it. It weighs on us.
Until when?
This does not stop with more sacrifices, nor with repeated slogans, nor with speeches. It stops with concrete actions and difficult decisions.
In this context, there is an element that deserves to be analyzed without prejudice. President Trump has shown more determination to act on the Cuba issue than any previous president.
Obama could have managed the rapprochement much earlier and taken it further. Biden did nothing. Both were conditioned by the fear of political backlash. Trump, on the other hand, is willing to pay the price for negotiate with a government that, according to its own Administrationis harmful to the national security of the United States. This is an opportunity that should not be missed.
From Havana too they talk about willingness to dialoguebut they will come to the table—if it materializes—with a country on the verge of economic collapse in which for decades reforms could have been made that were not made and perhaps could have avoided the current extreme scenario.
I have expressed this idea many times, out loud, with people of interest on both shores. It I have published also: “The institutional modernization that Cuba needs is not a rhetorical gesture or a formal concession, but the admission that the current institutional design is exhausted. More than a doctrinal discussion, the Cuban dilemma is practical: a model that does not solve the country’s central problems is no longer operational. Persisting in its defense as if time had not passed does not protect the country, it exposes it.”
Changing is not giving up. It is recognizing that there is a people that we all say we love and that cannot wait any longer.
It is a people that eagerly desires these changes and cannot continue to immolate itself.
