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Reforms under pressure
President Miguel Díaz-Canel announced a broad package of liberalizing and decentralizing economic reforms, saying, “These are times when we have to change,” in remarks to Cuban media broadcast by state television.
“The leadership of the Cuban revolution has convened in extraordinary fashion its main political instruments to give impetus to the alleged economic transformations announced by Miguel Díaz-Canel”
Díaz-Canel framed the changes as responding to “the demands of the current times,” while also warning, “We cannot say everything so clearly because the enemy is watching everything we do. Our response has to be unity.”
The announced reforms include opening tourism to “new actors” after major foreign hotel firms withdrew under pressure from Washington, and promising state enterprises more autonomy over wages, profit investment, import and export decisions, partnerships, business plans, and access to the foreign exchange market.
The package also targets agriculture by allowing agricultural producers direct access to inputs, the ability to engage with diverse economic actors, real bank accounts backed by cash, participation in exchange markets, and lighter bureaucracy.
In addition, Cuba plans to reduce the number of ministries from 27 to 20, seeking to end contradictions between central planning and the market, and between centralization and decentralization.
Dialogue with Washington
Cuba acknowledged that a representation of the Trump administration held a meeting on its territory on April 10, with Alejandro García del Toro, deputy director-general of Cuba’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, describing it as “respectful and formal.”
The meeting had been advanced the previous Friday by Axios, and the meeting involved State Department officials with undersecretary ranks while the Cuban delegation included deputy ministers.
Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, Raúl Castro’s grandson, participated as well, and the article says he is in charge of supervising his grandfather’s security operation, given that he is 94.
American sources said the United States offered Cuba Internet access through the Starlink system, Elon Musk’s company, if Havana committed to opening the state-run economy and undertook reforms to prevent the crisis from becoming irreparable.
Havana insisted, through García del Toro, that emphasis was placed on eliminating the energy blockade and that “at no time were deadlines or constraining proposals established.”
Skepticism and stakes
El Mundo said Cuba’s leadership convened the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) and that the National Assembly of the People’s Power will meet on Thursday to approve the reforms with “revolutionary pomp.”
“Cuba’s surprise reform package promises private openings, state-company autonomy, and foreign investment at a moment of shortages, sanctions, and exhaustion, raising a harder question for Latin America about whether a revolutionary state can decentralize power without losing its political script”
The outlet quoted economist Pedro Monreal, saying a far deeper transformation would be required and that it “does not appear on the PCC's agenda.”
El Mundo also argued that the reforms recycle past policies and seek new hotel investors in response to the departure of current ones pressured by Washington, while it added that the package does not touch Gaesa, described as “the powerful military-owned economic conglomerate that governs more than 60% of the national economy.”
The article tied the pressure to U.S. actions after the leadership change in Venezuela, saying Trump ordered a naval blockade of Cuba that caused more severe, frequent, and prolonged power outages, and shortages of gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel.
Yaxis Cires, director of strategy at the Cuban Observatory for Human Rights (OCDH), said, “What is happening—people dying of hunger in the countryside or in hospitals without medicines—is tremendous,” as the reforms were presented as a way to “buy time.”
