(EFE) the cause of the crisis, warns an analysis carried out by a new Miami “think tank.”
“In Cuba, even ideology has collapsed,” analyst and historian Juan Antonio Blanco and economist Emilio Morales, two of the members of Cuba Siglo 21, an entity founded last December, said at a press conference on Tuesday.
Their goal with this and other reports already published is for those who have to deal or negotiate with Cuba to know “the nature” of the system and “where the real power lies,” they said.
Their objective with this and other reports already published is for those who have to deal or negotiate with Cuba to know “the nature” of the system and “where the real power lies,” they said.
In his opinion, never before had another opportunity like the current one presented itself to “checkmate the Cuban regime” and not continue playing to stay in a “table”, as, according to what they say, has been done internationally since the triumph of the Revolution in 1959.
Although he points out that “there is never a predetermined future,” Blanco believes that “in the short term” a change will take place in Cuba and the military will play a fundamental role, unless what historians call a “black swan”, a circumstantial fact that suddenly changes everything.
If the military are the ones driving the change, it remains to be seen if only an economic opening will be imposed, in the style of Vladimir Putin’s Russia, or also a political one to move towards a democracy. “What is not viable is rescuing the dying person,” he asserts.
Despite the fact that Morales and Blanco defend that the solution must come from the Cubans, they urge the US to consider what sense it makes at this time to alleviate the pressure on the Island’s Government due to the unsatisfied needs of the population.
A record number of more than 300,000 Cubans entered the US through the border with Mexico in 2022 and now the Government led by Joe Biden has established a quota of 360,000 visas for them and for Venezuelans, Nicaraguans and Haitians.
“The crisis is not resolved by strengthening those who have created Cuba’s instability,” says Blanco, former president of the Miami-based Cuban Foundation for Human Rights.
“The crisis is not resolved by strengthening those who have created Cuba’s instability,” says Blanco, former president of the Cuban Foundation for Human Rights
The preliminary analysis published today on the Cuba Siglo 21 website is based on the idea that Cuba is no longer a socialist state that meets the needs of its citizens but a “mafia state” in which an “opaque oligarchy” that revolves around the “Castro clan” controls the country’s resources, according to the text.
The true power in Cuba, the report asserts, is not the “institutionalized bureaucrat” government but rather that oligarchy, represented by the Gaesa consortium, which, according to the data from the analysis, has a capital of 8.2 million dollars and controls 70 % of the economy and 95% of finance.
Gaesa, which belongs to the Armed Forces, has its companies registered outside the Island, in Panama, Luxembourg and other nations, and not even as Cuban companies, Cuba Siglo 21 asserts in the report.
According to Morales, Gaesa is probably the company with the most hotel rooms in all of Latin America, more than 37,000 spread over 117 hotels, despite the drop in the number of visitors to the island.
“Mafia state is not an epithet, it is a reality,” said Blanco, who linked Gaesa to international organized crime and illegal activities such as money laundering at the press conference.
Morales pointed out that Gaesa also obtains resources from the million-dollar remittances that Cubans abroad send to their families, as well as from medical missions abroad.
According to Morales, who has a renowned consultancy on the Cuban economy, Cuba is “bankrupt,” although the Paris Club forgave him 42 billion dollars in 2015.
According to Morales, who has a renowned consultancy on the Cuban economy, Cuba is “bankrupt,” although the Paris Club forgave him 42 billion dollars in 2015.
The debt recognized by the Government is 20,000 million dollars, but that figure does not include the 15,000 to 18,000 million that it owes to Venezuela and the 6,000 million to Argentina, to mention a few countries, according to what he said.
To recover the sugar industry, a product of which it became the world’s leading producer and which today must be imported to satisfy the domestic market, it would need 10,000 million dollars and the same amount to transform the energy matrix.
If the trial that the Cuban State has raised in the British courts for non-payment ends with a condemnation of Cuba, Morales predicts that there will be a long list of similar demands and embargoes of Cuban assets abroad.
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