Photo: Richard Hurd/CC
Photo: Richard Hurd/CC

Defend the revolution and fight for workers’ democracy

Scott Jones

“There are no beggars in Cuba”, according to former Cuban Minister for Labour Marta Elena Feitó Cabrera.

On 15 July she resigned after saying at a session of the National Assembly: “There are people pretending to be beggars to make easy money,” and accused people searching through the rubbish of being “illegal participants in the recycling service”. But these ‘beggars’ do exist and are not simply looking for easy money, and she caused anger in claiming otherwise.

Cabrera was criticised by Cuba’s president Miguel Díaz-Canel, aware of the worsening economic crisis hitting the island due to reduced tourist income and Donald Trump’s tightening of the stifling US embargo on the country.

Díaz-Canel said the leadership could not “act with condescension” or be “disconnected from the realities” of the people. And those realities are real, with the economy probably at its weakest since the collapse of the Soviet Union and its effect on the Cuban economy in the 1990s.

Cuba’s main income since has been through tourism, but the pandemic effectively stopped that for a couple of years and numbers have still not recovered. Cuba did not re-open its borders to international travel until November 2021, by which time many visitors had gone elsewhere. And this January it received only 196,000 tourists, its worst since the pandemic and a third of the number for January 2019.

The US trade and economic embargo has cost Cuba billions over the decades and hindered Cuba’s ability to acquire basic goods. On 30 June, Trump tightened the screw further in a ‘National Security Presidential Memorandum’, part of which was to implement a new travel ban and make it harder for Cubans in the US to send money back to families on the island.

The most obvious sign of the economic issues is the effect that fuel shortages are having on daily life, and inevitably on tourism too. In March, a major failure at a substation left much of the country without power, leading to vast work and school closures, and it was the fourth national outage in six months.

Despite these obstacles, millions took to the streets, including 600,000 in Havana, to take part in the traditional May Day parades on 1 May, showing the mass support that exists for the revolution of 1959 and its many and long-lasting gains for the working class and poor of Cuba. But, even wading through the misinformation from the US and other opponents, it is clear there have been protests in the last few years against conditions on the island.

We defend the Cuban revolution and its gains, and the struggle for democratic rights by the working class, poor and youth in Cuba is crucial. A full debate to draw up an emergency economic plan to deal with the crisis needs to be elaborated by the working class and the mass of the population.

The need to oppose and build an alternative to the increasing threat of capitalist restoration, and to fight for genuine workers’ democracy and a socialist planned economy in Cuba in these tumultuous times, is more urgent than ever.

This movement, defending the gains and winning new ones, fighting alongside the working class and youth who are increasingly moving into action all over the world, could build a real socialist alternative to capitalism. And this movement, taking inspiration from the Cuban revolution, while learning its lessons, can win.