Raúl Castro faces the economic crisis
After the death of Fidel Castro, which occurred on November 25, 2016, rumors of change in Cuban society began to circulate. In reality, Fidel had already long before his death entrusted the reins of power to his brother Raúl, who had maintained the same political course, although he had been listening to the demands of Cuban youth and intellectuals. Although no real political changes have been made in the last ten years, some rights have been granted to the population. Thus, since 2010, Cubans are allowed to own a cell phone, a computer, a DVD player, a car and an apartment. These are deceptive measures, knowing that all these goods remain economically inaccessible to the majority. Recently, Cubans have been able to connect to the internet (wifi and 3G network) and communicate freely with the rest of the world, something unthinkable 15 years ago.
Some more significant reforms to encourage private sector development were launched in the early 2010s. Faced with the global economic crisis, the government, forced to lay off 500,000 civil servants between 2010 and 2011, decided to encourage self-employment. As early as 2011, thousands of licenses were granted to individuals, allowing them to open their business (a law limiting the creation of one business per person will however quickly limit this entrepreneurial freedom). Many restaurateurs were able to open establishments. New casas particulares (guest houses) were created and many drivers were able to start their own business. Cuba has seen an exponential growth in the number of mini-negotiations, with 178 jobs officially possible in the private sector. By levying taxes on their revenues, the government has been able to replenish the coffers: in 2016, during the party congress, Raúl Castro indeed welcomed a slight improvement in growth (+4% in 2015). If the private sector has made it possible to reap wealth, it is because it is essentially dependent on tourism, which is doing quite well in Cuba during the 2010 decade. But when the Covid-19 crisis hit the world, the situation changed.
Post-castro and the pandemic
In April 2018, Miguel Díaz-Canel (57), Raúl Castro's right-hand man, was elected with 99.83% of the vote by the National Assembly. No surprise, since he was the only candidate. An engineer by training, Miguel Díaz-Canel has held various positions in the administration and in the Cuban Communist Party. This change of presidency remains, however, a change of facade, since until 2021, Raúl Castro remains the first secretary of the Communist Party, "the highest governing body of Cuban society". Miguel Díaz-Canel will succeed Raúl Castro as first secretary of the party on April 19, 2021. In the meantime, a new constitution, approved by 86% of Cuban citizens in early 2019, comes to value the private sector again without bringing anything more than the reforms of 2011. The only real changes are the addition of a prime minister's post and the limitation of presidential terms to a maximum of two. State-owned enterprises remain all-powerful and are the main economic and industrial players. In practice, the economy - apart from the black market - is still dominated by state capitalism.
When the global pandemic hit in early 2019, Cuba immediately closed its borders, only to reopen them a year and a half later, on November 15, 2021. During this period, the many Cubans deriving most of their resources from tourism then found themselves penniless, further accentuating an already very difficult situation of precariousness. The pressure cooker exploded in the summer of 2021, when on July 11 and 12, thousands of Cubans demonstrated with cries of "We are hungry" and "Down with the dictatorship". This popular movement, the largest ever seen in Cuba since Fidel Castro's revolution, resulted in the imprisonment of more than 700 Cuban citizens in the following months.
Relations with the United States are still tense
Rapprochement under the Obama mandate. The U.S. embargo against Cuba, imposed since 1962, is still in force in 2022. However, Obama is responsible for bringing the two countries closer together. In January 2011, he authorized American travel to Cuba for academic, cultural, religious or sports purposes. Also, in the same year, Obama lifted travel restrictions for Cuban-Americans who wish to visit their families in Cuba, allowing Cuban exiles to visit the island as many times as they wish. In addition, caps on remittances to Cuban accounts were removed. Finally, on December 17, 2014, diplomatic relations between Cuba and the United States, under the leadership of Obama and Raúl Castro, were restored. On July 20, 2015, a Cuban embassy opens in Washington and a U.S. embassy opens in Havana. Obama finally visits Cuba in March 2016, for a historic three-day visit. He says he wants to continue this policy of openness. He relaxed the economic embargo, without repealing it.
In January 2017, the arrival of Donald Trump to power marked a serious halt to the warming of relations with Cuba. The lifting of the embargo turned into a utopia. If he does not prohibit travel to Cuba by U.S. citizens, the Republican president embellishes them with restrictive measures. Thus, Americans can only travel to the island through an American agency that will ensure that travelers contribute to the enrichment of the population but in no case to the Cuban state. A way to encourage private enterprise while affirming its opposition to the Cuban regime. At the end of 2017, the diplomatic crisis known as the "acoustic attacks" comes to put a serious brake on the U.S.-Cuban rapprochement. Several diplomats at the U.S. Embassy in Havana are indeed taken by dizziness, note cognitive and hearing disorders without anyone being able to explain the reason of the Havana Syndrome. The United States, suspecting an attack by the Cuban state, repatriated part of its diplomatic personnel and expelled Cuban diplomats from American territory in retaliation. To date, no investigation has been able to elucidate either the syndrome or the person responsible. And insofar as Cuba had no interest in deteriorating its relations with the United States, there are whispers on Cuban territory that these acoustic attacks were the work of another foreign power, why not China.
Joe Biden, who will succeed Trump in 2021 and who was Obama's vice president for eight years, seems surprisingly reluctant to re-establish friendly relations with Cuba's neighbor. Commentators assure that the man probably prefers to preserve his electoral interests in Florida, where the Cuban-American community, anti-Castro, is very influential. If at the end of 2021, the Biden administration was still evaluating the possibility of removing Cuba from its blacklist (countries supporting terrorism), in the spring of 2022, it seemed that things were going in the opposite direction. Indeed, at the time of writing, anyone who had visited Cuba had their ESTA (temporary tourist visa) automatically and permanently invalidated. The only way to travel to the United States after visiting Cuba is now to apply for a (long and tedious) 10-year tourist visa... Similarly, any vessel (merchant or pleasure) transiting through Cuban waters is denied access to the U.S. coast for six months. Indirect economic coercion measures in short.
The case of Guantánamo
A US possession for more than a century, the Guantánamo naval base (on the south-eastern tip of Cuban territory) has been equipped since 2002 with a prison where the United States holds detainees from the war delivered "against terrorism". A real anomaly, this base has not ceased to agitate Cuba's geopolitics. In 2006, the US Supreme Court outlawed the first special courts that were supposed to be able to try "terrorists" held at the Guantánamo base. Legislation passed by the US Congress immediately established new special courts and prohibited detainees from seeking civil remedies to challenge their detention. On 12 June 2008, the Supreme Court (the highest court in the USA) renewed its disapproval on the basis ofhabeas corpus, a procedure that allows a common law judge to rule on the legality of a person's detention and, if necessary, to order their release. Consequently, it gives detainees, who may be brought before a special court, the possibility of bringing a case before the civil courts on the issue of their detention, which is deemed illegal under international law.
On 22 January 2009, a few days after his inauguration, President Barack Obama made it clear that he wanted to end the Guantánamo camp by signing an executive order announcing its closure in 2010. Trials of prisoners were to be suspended until they were moved to a new camp. But soon, tensions between the Obama administration and the military commissions at Guantánamo were such that the closure of the prison was postponed indefinitely... If during his election campaign Joe Biden, the current US president, had promised to end this prison with a more than dubious reputation with regard to human rights, in 2022, that is to say 20 years after its opening, there was no political will to close the detention camp.
