HAVANA, Cuba. – They do not say that it is part of the call “National Prevention and Confrontation Exercise”of the raid that, with some distractions, has the dollars of private entrepreneurs in its sights as its main objective, but it is no coincidence that they have chosen this week for that mass murder that is actually the Resolution 56 of the Ministry of Internal Trade (MINCIN)published in the Official Gazette this December 5, which orders the cancellation of all commercial licenses granted to MSMEs, non-agricultural cooperatives (CNA) and self-employed workers (TCP), whom very recently, just in August 2022, had authorized wholesale trade as a secondary activity.
It has been established by the MINCIN, as the paper says, but it is known that the new regulations have been thrown at the bureau to the minister who, in these matters, has become directly subordinate to the newly created National Institute of Non-State Economic Actors (INAENE), an instrument designed not to “organize” what in practice has proven to be organized perfectly, without the need for the intervention of the Government, not even its financial system, but to finish extinguishing that part of the “non-state sector” which is annoying to them, precisely because it has proven to be more efficient and successful than a state sector that has never known good times.
And also because it casts a shadow over those “enterprises” that, although they pretend to be private, are in reality managed by figureheads of a regime that, long before the disappearance of the Soviet Unionhad already become fully involved in the dark world of off-shorethe namesakes, the tax havens and other camouflage mechanisms that, under the pretext of avoiding the “blockade”, allowed Fidel Castro to operate freely as a true tycoon under the radars of Washington but, above all, those of Moscow.
That it was a death foretold is not only said by the many signals that the executioners themselves have been sending since the middle of last year, when it occurred to them to demonize the private sector to take the blame for so much accumulated disaster off of themselves, but, above all, by the indisputable death sentence represented by the appointment of Mercedes López Acea as head of INAENE, a bureaucratic monstrosity that by its very existence makes evident the segregation so often denied by those who persist in talking about equality for all economic actors.
It was Manuel Marrero Cruz’s turn to announce the crusade, in December 2023 when he spoke in the National Assembly about the measures that would come to “correct distortions” but the firing squad was left to a bloodthirsty woman like Mercedes López Acea, an engineer and cadre. professional of the Communist Party, who without knowing absolutely anything about Economics, ended up heading the institute because he only had to fulfill a single task, reducing the list of MSMEs, TCP and CNA to the minimum, and For that, no more knowledge is needed than knowing how to handle the instruments of torture and death.
Let’s try to remember what her “achievements” were as first deputy minister in a Ministry of the Food Industry that at the end of her administration ended up worse than ever, unrecoverable, useless; or as head of the Department of Transportation in the Central Committee of the PCC – the body that governs the functioning of the corresponding ministry –, a task of “correction” of the sector to which we still owe the chaos experienced these days.
If López Acea could not handle food production or transportation, much less will he do anything different for the private sector, and it is precisely that he was not entrusted to “correct” it but to exterminate it, just as extermination has always been the best what he knows how to do.
Perhaps it will even manage to reach, in clear decline, those first 35 MSMEs that were announced with great fanfare at the end of September 2021, and that in just under three years became thousands, in a very deliberately uncontrolled “MSME” euphoria which served them, between cabbage and cabbage, to mask those lettuces that at the time no one saw because they were in the middle of the crowd disguised as street clothes: ex-combatants, ex-military men, former repressors, former leaders, former agents, brothers of…, children of…, friends of… who have revealed themselves as “businessmen” only because they carry out an order in such a pleasant “mission” (to capture and accumulate dollars).
Not even a five-year period has passed—which was the time needed by the Soviet communists to “plan” the economy and invent new ways to get rich—since the first MSME was officially born, and they have already begun to sign the death certificates. Because there are less than 10 private companies that will keep their heads on their shoulders, that is, the rights to import and sell as wholesalers (which, in the Cuban economic context, is essential to maintain a dynamic that the state sector does not guarantee) and There are tens of thousands who will be forced to accept the Government as an intermediary, that is, surrender.
A Government (said by the regime itself repeatedly) seriously affected by the shortage, the lack of liquidity, the deficit in electricity generation, the “blockade”, theft in companies, the labor exodus, the “betrayals” of vice prime ministers (like Gil and Di-Lella) who have ended up paying the hazing of believing that, even though they were upstarts, they could compete in matters of personal business, corruption, on an equal footing with their bosses. And so, therefore, a Government that will take advantage of these coming months with the naive ones who still persist in negotiating with the same cheaters.
He will loot them, beyond the cuts he takes from imports and intermediation because later he will “hit them” with taxes, while forcing them to carry out transactions as the only method of payment. Because cash will barely serve private companies to cover bribes, which as of March 2025 will be new ones, and also mandatory to avoid the retention of goods in ports and warehouses, reserve the best products, obtain the lowest ones. prices, in short, all those nooks and crannies of the “struggle” where the corruption of a state sector, bureaucratic “by nature,” has always been born and grown.
If the raid undertaken these days has forced the temporary and even permanent closure of many establishments, the new provision of this December 5 will end up closing those that remained open, confident that having the papers and inventories “in order” would be enough to survive any “exercise”.
Now uncertainty comes to almost everyone. And only for the most astute is the time to go underground as a useful reminder of those times when the “mules” sold exclusively through Revolico when they were not allowed to sell on the street. Luckily, social networks remain to survive, even if it is behind fake profiles. In fact, possibly more than 80 percent of the “non-state” trade in Cuba is carried out on the internet, a space where all persistent entrepreneurs will move, just as that Cuba that is trying to survive Castroism has moved in full. and “continuity”.
But, despite all of the above, and although it is undoubtedly a death sentence, and behind it lies the dark purpose of monopolizing the lucrative business of imports and wholesale sales for a few cronies, there is also the possibility that This Resolution 56 did not arrive by chance just a few days before donald trump assume his new mandate.
It is known that a new barrage of sanctions is on the way, previous experience puts them on alert about what could happen to the flow of dollars through formal and informal channels, and so they prepare to “resist” by hastily filling the coffers. or, perhaps, preparing the scene (and the pocketbook) for a last-minute negotiation; After all, the message has already been sent and although they want to appear indifferent, the reality is that some of them, especially the communists and repressors who have taken a liking to the role of businessmen, are eagerly awaiting a positive response.
