Category: Dossier Cuba 21 English

Cuba has before it the opportunity to break out of its oppression and stagnation. There is no need for another “deal” fabricated by the power elite to maintain its control over the country and Cuban society. The road map the Act outlines in its Title II contains basic demands for freedoms and democracy that are popular in Cuba today. All that remains to be done is to follow it.

The power elite and its government are not only surrounded by sanctions, the Helms Burton Act, its Title III, financial sanctions, and the consequences of being a bad payer. They are hemmed in -first and foremost- by their own incompetence, by their political clumsiness in resisting change, even though it knows that its model does not work. The island is currently in the eye of a devastating financial, political and social hurricane.

While the government tries to minimize the importance of the amount of crimes committed, the fact is that criminal acts continue to increase, an increase of 50.72% in comparison to 2023. 

Remittances, the government’s main source of foreign currency income, fell 43% in 2024 compared to the previous year and 70% compared to 2019.

With fragile governability, high levels of social discontent and a massive exodus of one million Cubans in the last three years, the change of regimen in Cuba is possible in 2025.

GAESA has lost control of the remittance business in Cuba, due to a quiet “citizens’ financial rebellion” against its banking monopoly. Just over 95% of the flow of remittances from the Cuban diaspora to the island is being channeled through a network of more than 150 “informal banks”. GAESA will only collect around US$81.6 million at the end of this year.

Between January and October 2024, 1,718,636 visitors arrived, a drop of 48.23% compared to the same period in 2019, before the pandemic. In 2023, tourism revenues reached only US$1.216 billion, a drop of 61.82% compared to the US$3.185 billion obtained in 2019. The recovery of tourism in Cuba requires profound structural changes.

The transportation sector is another important sector of the economy that is a victim of the looting and the control that GAESA -the main oligarchic-mafioso organization of the Cuban regime- has over the country’s finances.

Maduro’s mega-fraud turned out to be useless. He lost and everybody knows it. However, his will to cling to power by blood and fire following Havana’s instructions has turned Venezuela into a neuralgic problem for regional and international stability. But the struggle for Venezuela’s future is far from over.

During the first half of 2024 reveals a worrysome increase in crime compared to the same period of the previous year. In total, 432 crimes were reported between January and June 2024, representing a daily average of 2.37 crimes.

2023 was the year in which crime began to be recognized as a problem in Cuba. Throughout 2023, OCAC monitored and collected a total of 649 crime reports in Cuba, which is equivalent to almost two crimes per day.

The sharp drop of more than 50% of the Cuba’s three main lines of income – medical exports, remittances and tourism – have hastened the collapse of the governance regime. The celebration of 26 of July is a day that begins to mark the countdown to the extinction of the Cuban regime, given the depth of the crisis in which it is mired and its manifest incapacity to get out of it.