Cuba’s prestigious biotech sector has developed five different Covid vaccines to date, including Abdala, Soberana 02 and Soberana Plus — all of which Cuba has said provide upwards of 90% protection against symptomatic Covid when administered in three doses.
The country of roughly 11 million remains the only country in Latin America and the Caribbean to have produced a homegrown shot for Covid.
The WHO’s potential approval of Cuba’s nationally produced Covid vaccines would carry “enormous significance” for low-income nations, John Kirk, professor emeritus at the Latin America program of Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, Canada, told CNBC via telephone.
Cuba has vaccinated a greater percentage o of its population against
Covid-19 than almost all of the world’s largest and richest nations. In fact,
only the oil-rich United Arab Emirates boasts a stronger vaccination record. The tiny Communist-run Caribbean island has
achieved this milestone by producing its own Covid vaccine, even as it
struggles to keep supermarket shelves stocked amid a decades-old U.S. trade
embargo.
“It is an
incredible feat,” Helen Yaffe, a Cuba expert and lecturer in economic and
social history at the University of Glasgow, Scotland, told CNBC via telephone. “Those of us who have studied biotech aren’t
surprised in that sense, because it has not just come out of the blue. It is
the product of a conscious government policy of state investment in the sector,
in both public health and in medical science.”
To date,
around 86% of the Cuban population has been fully vaccinated against Covid with
three doses, and another 7% have been partly inoculated against the disease,
according to official statistics compiled by Our World in Data. These figures include children from the age
of two, who began receiving the vaccine several months ago. The country’s
health authorities are rolling out booster shots to the entire population this
month in a bid to limit the spread of the highly transmissible omicron Covid
variant.
I think it is clear that many
countries and populations in the global south see the Cuban vaccine as their
best hope for getting vaccinated by 2025.
Helen Yaffe Lecturer in economic
and social history at the University of Glasgow
The
country of roughly 11 million remains the only country in Latin America and the
Caribbean to have produced a homegrown shot for Covid.
“Just the
sheer audacity of this tiny little country to produce its own vaccines and
vaccinating 90% of its population is an extraordinary thing,” John Kirk,
professor emeritus at the Latin America program of Dalhousie University in Nova
Scotia, Canada, told CNBC via telephone.
Cuba’s
prestigious biotech sector has developed five different Covid vaccines,
including Abdala, Soberana 02 and Soberana Plus — all of which Cuba says
provide upwards of 90% protection against symptomatic Covid when three doses
are administered.
Cuba’s
vaccine clinical trial data has yet to undergo international scientific peer
review, although the country has engaged in two virtual exchanges of
information with the World Health Organizationto initiate the Emergency
Use Listing process for its vaccines.
Unlike
U.S. pharmaceutical giants Pfizer and Moderna, which use mRNA technology, all of Cuba’s vaccines are
subunit protein vaccines — like the Novavax vaccine. Crucially for low-income countries,
they are cheap to produce, can be manufactured at scale and do not require deep
freezing. It has prompted international
health officials to tout the shots as a potential source of hope for the
“global south,” particularly as low vaccination rates persist. For instance,
while around 70% of people in the European Union have been fully vaccinated, less than 10% of the African population have been
fully vaccinated.
Vicente
Verez, head of Cuba’s Finlay Vaccine Institute, told Reuters last month that
the U.N. health agency was assessing Cuba’s manufacturing facilities to a
“first-world standard,” citing the costly process in upgrading theirs to that
level.
Verez has said previously that the necessary documents and data would be submitted to the WHO in the first quarter of 2022. Approval from the WHO would be an important step in making the shots available throughout the world.
‘Enormous significance’
When
asked what it would mean for low-income countries should the WHO approve Cuba’s
Covid vaccines, Yaffe said: “I think it is clear that many countries and
populations in the global south see the Cuban vaccine as their best hope for
getting vaccinated by 2025.” “And
actually, it affects all of us because what we are seeing with the omicron
variant is that what happens when vast populations have almost no coverage is
that you have mutations and new variants developing and then they come back to
haunt the advanced capitalist countries which have been hoarding vaccines,” she
added.
Kirk
agreed that the WHO’s potential approval of Cuba’s nationally produced Covid
vaccines would carry “enormous significance” for developing countries.
“One
thing that is important to bear in mind is that the vaccines don’t require the
ultra-low temperatures which Pfizer and Moderna need so there are places, in
Africa in particular, where you don’t have the ability to store these global
north vaccines,” Kirk said.
He also
pointed out that Cuba, unlike other countries or pharmaceutical companies, had
offered to engage in the transfer of technology to share its vaccine production
expertise with low-income countries. “The
objective of Cuba is not to make a fast buck, unlike the multinational drug
corporations, but rather to keep the planet healthy. So, yes making an honest
profit but not an exorbitant profit as some of the multinationals would make,”
Kirk said.
WHO chief
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned last month that a “tsunami” of Covid cases
driven by the omicron variant was “so huge and so quick” that it had
overwhelmed health systems worldwide. Tedros
repeated his call for greater vaccine distribution to help low-income countries
vaccinate their populations, with more than 100 countries on track to miss the U.N. health agency’s target
for 70% of the world to be fully vaccinated by July.
The WHO
said last year that the world was likely to have enough Covid vaccine doses in
2022 to fully inoculate the entire global adult population — provided that
high-income countries did not hoard vaccines to use in booster programs.
Alongside
pharmaceutical industry trade associations, a number of Western countries —
such as Canada and the U.K. — are among those actively blocking a patent-waiver proposal
designed to boost the global production of Covid vaccines. The urgency of waiving certain intellectual
property rights amid the pandemic has repeatedly been underscored by the WHO,
health experts, civil society groups, trade unions, former world leaders,
international medical charities, Nobel laureates and human rights
organizations.
An absence of vaccine hesitancy
The
seven-day average of daily Covid cases in Cuba climbed to 2,063 as at Jan. 11,
reflecting an almost 10-fold increase since the end of December as the omicron
variant spreads. This comes as the
number of omicron Covid cases surges across countries and territories in the
Americas region. The Pan American Health Organization, the WHO’s regional
Americas office, has warned that a rise in cases may lead to an uptick in
hospitalizations and deaths in the coming weeks.
PAHO has
called on countries to accelerate vaccination coverage to reduce Covid
transmission and has repeated its recommendation of public health measures,
such as tight-fitting masks — a mandatory requirement in Cuba.
Yaffe has
long been confident in Cuba’s ability to boast one of the world’s strongest
vaccination records. Speaking to CNBC in February last year — before the
country had even developed a homegrown vaccine — she said she could “guarantee”that Cuba would be able to administer its domestically produced Covid
vaccine extremely quickly. “It wasn’t
conjecture,” Yaffe said. “It was based on understanding their public health
care system and the structure of it. So, the fact that they have what they call
family doctor and nurse clinics in every neighborhood.”
Many of
these clinics are based in rural and hard-to-reach areas and it means health
authorities can quickly deliver vaccines to the island’s population. “The other aspect is they don’t have a
movement of vaccine hesitancy, which is something that we are seeing in many
countries,” Yaffe said.
he street demonstrations that broke out all over Cuba on July 11 are an unprecedented event in the more than 60 years since the triumph of the Cuban Revolution.
But why now? This essay explores the historic, economic and political factors
that help to clarify the causes of Cuba’s July 11,
considers the role of the United States, and briefly reflects on
Cuba’s future.
On Sunday, July 11, Cuba erupted in street
protests. Unlike the major street protest that took place in 1994 and was limited to the Malecón, the long multi-lane
Havana road facing the Gulf of Mexico, the July 11
outbreak of protest was national in scope. There were protests in many towns
and cities, including Santiago de Cuba in the east, Trinidad in the center of
the island, as well as Havana in the west. The growing access to social media
in the island played an important role in the rapid spread of the protests; no
wonder the government immediately suspended access to certain social media
sites and brought all telephone calls from abroad to a halt.
The street presence and participation of Black women and men was notable
everywhere. This should not be surprising since Black Cubans are far less
likely to receive hard currency remittances from abroad even though over 50% of the population receive some degree of financial
support through that channel. These remittances have become the key to survival
in Cuba, particularly in light of the ever-diminishing number of goods
available in the peso-denominated subsidized ration book. Cuban Blacks have also
been the victims of institutional racism in the growing tourist industry where
“front line” visible jobs are mostly reserved
for conventionally attractive white and light skinned women and men.
The demonstrators did not endorse or support any political program or
ideology, aside from the general demand for political freedom. The official
Cuban press claims that the demonstrations were organized from abroad by
right-wing Cubans. But none of the demands associated with the Cuban right-wing
were echoed by the demonstrators, like the support for Trump often heard in
South Florida and among some dissident circles in Cuba. And no one called for “humanitarian intervention” espoused by Plattistas
(Platt Amendment, approved by Congress in 1901and
abolished in 1934, gave the United States the right
to militarily intervene in Cuba), such as biologist Ariel Ruiz Urquiola,
himself a victim of government repression for his independent ecological
activism. The demonstrators did speak about the scarcity of food, medicine and
essential consumer items, repudiated President Díaz-Canel as singao—a
phrase that in Cuba translates as “fucked” but
means a wicked, evil person, and chanted patria y vida
(fatherland and life). “Patria y Vida” is
the title of a very popular and highly polished rap song by a group
of Cuban Black rappers (available on YouTube.) I have seen and heard the
song more than a dozen times to enjoy it as well as to search for its
explicit and implied meanings including in its silences and ambiguities.
“Patria y Vida” counterposes itself to the old
Cuban government slogan of “Patria
o Muerte” (“Fatherland or Death”). While that slogan may have made sense
in the 1960s when Cuba was faced with actual
invasions, it borders on the obscene when voiced by second generation
bureaucrats. It is certainly high time that the regime’s macho cult of violence
and death be challenged, and this song does it very well.
But what does it mean to implicitly repudiate the year 1959,
the first year of the successful revolution, as the song does? There was no
Soviet style system in Cuba at the time and the year 1959
is not equivalent to the Castro brothers. Many people of a wide variety of
political beliefs fought and died to bring about the revolution that overthrew
the Batista dictatorship. The song does express many important democratic
sentiments against the present Cuban dictatorship, but it is unfortunately
silent about the desirable alternative, which leaves room for the worst
right-wing, pro-Trump elements in South Florida to rally behind it as if it
was theirs.
True to form, President Díaz-Canel called on the “revolutionaries”
to be ready for combat and go out and reclaim the streets away from the
demonstrators. In fact, it was the uniformed police, Seguridad del Estado (the
secret police), and Boinas Negras (black berets, the special forces) that
responded with tear gas, beatings and hundreds of arrests, including several
leftist critics of the government. According to a July 21 Reuters report, the authorities had confirmed that they
had started the trials of the demonstrators accused of a variety of
charges, but denied it according to another press report on July 25. These are summary trials without the benefit of
defense counsel, a format generally used for minor violations in Cuba but
which in this case involves the possibility of years in prison for those
found guilty.
Most of the demonstrations were angry but usually peaceful and only in a few instances did the demonstrators behave violently, as in the case of some looting and a police car that was overturned. This was in clear contrast with the violence frequently displayed by the forces of order. It is worth noting that in calling his followers to take to the streets to combat the demonstrators, Díaz-Canel invoked the more than 60-year-old notion that “the streets belong to the revolutionaries.” Just as the government has always proclaimed that “the universities belong to the revolutionaries” in order to expel students and professors that don’t toe the government’s line. One example is René Fidel González García, a law professor expelled from the University of Oriente. He is a strong critic of government policies, who, far from giving up on his revolutionary ideals, has reaffirmed them on numerous occasions.
But Why Now?
Cuba is in the middle of the most serious economic crisis since the 1990s, when, as a result of the collapse of the
Soviet bloc, Cubans suffered innumerable and lengthy blackouts due to the
severe shortage of oil, along with endemic malnutrition with its accompanying
health problems.
The present economic crisis is due to the pandemic-related decline of
tourism, combined with the government’s long term capital disinvestment and
inability to maintain production, even at the lower levels of the last five years.
Cuba’s GDP (Gross Domestic Product) fell by 11% in 2020 and only rose by 0.5% in 2019, the year before the
pandemic broke out. The annual sugar crop that ended this spring did not even
reach 1 million tons, which is below the 1.4 million average of recent
years and very far below the 8 million tons in 1989. The recent government attempt to unify the various
currencies circulating in Cuba — primarily the CUC, a proxy for the
dollar, and the peso — has backfired resulting in serious inflation that was predicted
among others by the prominent Cuban economist Carmelo Mesa-Lago. While the CUC
is indeed disappearing, the Cuban economy has been virtually dollarized with
the constant decline of the value of the peso. While the official exchange rate
is 24 pesos to the dollar, the prevailing black
market rate is 60 pesos to the dollar, and it is
going to get worse due to the lack of tourist dollars. This turn to an ever
more expensive dollar, may be somewhat restrained in light of the government’s
recent shift to the euro as its preferred hard currency.
Worst of all, is the generalized shortage of food, even for those who have divisas,
the generic term for hard currencies. The agricultural reforms of the last
years aimed at increasing domestic production have not worked because they are
inadequate and insufficient, making it impossible for the private farmers and
for the usufructuarios (farmers who lease land from the government for
20 year terms renewable for another 20 years) to feed the country. Thus, for example, the
government arbitrarily gives bank credits to the farmers for some things but
not for others, like for clearing the marabú, an invasive weed that is
costly to remove, but an essential task if crops are to grow. Acopio, the
state agency in charge of collecting the substantial proportion of the crop
that farmers have to sell to the state at prices fixed by the government is
notoriously inefficient and wasteful, because the Acopio trucks do not
arrive in time to collect their share, or because of the systemic indifference
and carelessness that pervade the processes of shipping and storage. This
creates huge spoilage and waste that have reduced the quality and quantity of
goods available to consumers. It is for reasons such as these that Cuba imports
70% of the food it consumes from various countries
including the United States (an exemption to the blockade was carved out in 2001 for the unlimited export of food and medicines to
Cuba but with the serious limitation that Cuba has to pay in cash before the
goods are shipped to the island.)
The Cuban economist Pedro Monreal has called attention to the overwhelming
millions of pesos that the government has dedicated to the construction of
tourist hotels (mostly in joint ventures with foreign capital) that even before
the pandemic were filled to well below their capacity, while agriculture is
starved of government investments. This unilateral choice of priorities by the
one-party state is an example of what results from profoundly undemocratic
practices. This is not a “flaw” of the Cuban
system any more than the relentless pursuit of profit is a “flaw” of American capitalism. Both bureaucracy and
the absence of democracy in Cuba and the relentless pursuit of profit in the
United States are not defects of but constitutive elements of
both systems.
Similarly, oil has become increasingly scarce as Venezuelan oil shipments in
exchange for Cuban medical services have declined. There is no doubt that
Trump’s strengthening of the criminal blockade, which went beyond merely
reversing Obama’s liberalization during his second period in the White House,
has also gravely hurt the island, among other reasons because it has made it
more difficult for the Cuban government to use banks abroad, whether American
or not, to finance its operations. This is because the U.S. government will
punish enterprises who do business with Cuba by blocking them from doing
business with the United States. Until the events of July 11,the
Biden administration had left almost all of Trump’s sanctions untouched. Since
then, it has promised to allow for larger remittances and to provide staff for
the American consulate in Havana.
While the criminal blockade has been very real and seriously damaging, it
has been relatively less important in creating economic havoc than what lies at
the very heart of the Cuban economic system: the bureaucratic, inefficient and
irrational control and management of the economy by the Cuban government. It is
the Cuban government and its “left” allies in
the Global North, not the Cuban people, who continue, as they have for decades,
to blame only the blockade.
At the same time, the working class in the urban and rural areas have
neither economic incentives nor political incentives in the form of democratic
control of their workplaces and society to invest themselves in their work,
thus reducing the quantity and quality of production.
Health Situation in Cuba
After the Covid-19 pandemic broke out in the
early spring of 2020, Cuba did relatively well
during the first year of the pandemic in comparison with other countries in the
region. But in the last few months the situation in Cuba, for what are still
unclear reasons except for the entry of the Delta variant in the island, made
a sharp turn for the worse, and in doing so seriously aggravated the
economic and political problems of the country. Thus, as Jessica Domínguez
Delgado noted in the Cuban blog El Toque (July 13),
until April 12, a little more than a year
after the beginning of the pandemic, 467 persons had
died among the 87,385
cases that had been diagnosticated as having Covid-19.
But only three months later, on July 12, the number
of the deceased had reached 1,579
with 224, 914 diagnosed
cases (2.5 times as many
as in the much longer previous period).
The province of Matanzas and its capital city of the same name located 100 kilometers east of Havana became the epicenter of
the pandemic’s sudden expansion in Cuba. According to the provincial governor,
Matanzas province was 3,000
beds short of the number of patients that needed them. On July 6, a personal friend who lives in the city of
Matanzas wrote to me about the dire health situation in the city with
a lack of doctors, tests, and oxygen in the midst of collapsing hospitals.
My friend wrote that the national government had shown itself incapable of
controlling the situation until that very day when it finally formulated
a plan of action for the city. The government did finally take
a number of measures including sending a substantial number of additional
medical personnel, although it is too early to tell at the time of this writing
with what results.
Cuban scientists and research institutions deserve a lot of credit for
the development of several anti-Covid vaccines. However, the government was
responsible for the excessive and unnecessary delay in immunizing people on the
island, made worse by its decision to neither procure donations of vaccines
from abroad nor join the 190-nation strong COVAX
(Covid-19 Vaccines Global Access) sponsored by
several international organizations including the World Health Organization
(WHO), an organization with which the Cuban government has good relations.
Currently only 16% of the population has been fully
vaccinated and 30% has received at least one dose of
the vaccine.
The medical crisis in the province and capital city of Matanzas fits into
a more general pattern of medical scarcity and abandonment as the Cuban
government has accelerated its export of medical personnel abroad to strengthen
what has been for some time its number one export. This is why the valuable
family doctor program introduced in the 1980s has
seriously deteriorated. While the Cuban government uses a sliding scale
(including some pro bono work) in what it charges its foreign government
clients, Cuban doctors get an average of 10 – 25% of what the foreign clients pay the Cuban government.
Needless to add, Cuban medical personnel cannot organize independent unions to
bargain with the government about the terms of their employment. Nevertheless,
going abroad is a desired assignment for most Cuban doctors because they
earn a significant amount of hard currency and can purchase foreign goods.
However, if they fail to return to Cuba after their assignments are over, they
are administratively (i.e., not judicially) punished with a forced exile
of 8 years duration.
The Political Context
Earlier this year, the leadership old guard, who fought the Batista regime
and are in their late eighties and early nineties, retired from their
government positions to give way to the new leadership of Miguel Díaz-Canel
(born in 1960) as president and Manuel Marrero Cruz
(born in 1963) as prime minister. This new
leadership is continuing Raúl Castro’s policy of economic and social
liberalization without democratization. For example, in 2013
the government liberalized the regulations that controlled the movement of
people to make it easier for most Cubans to travel abroad. However, at the same
time, the government made it virtually impossible for many dissidents to leave
the country, by for example delaying their departure so they could not make it
on time to conferences held abroad, and by creating a list of some 200 “regulados” (people
subject to regulatory rules) that are not allowed to leave the country at all.
It is important to point out that as in the case of other measures adopted by
the Cuban government mentioned earlier, these actions continue the policies of
Fidel and Raúl Castro, in which political and administrative decisions are made
outside of the regime’s own judicial system. The same applies to the hundreds
of relatively brief detentions that the government of Raúl Castro carried out
every year, especially to try to impede public demonstrations not controlled by
the government (a police method that only works for previously planned
political protests, unlike the ones that took place on July 11).
The One-Party State
The one-party state continues to function as under Fidel and Raúl Castro’s
rule. In reality, however, the Cuban Communist Party (PCC, its Spanish acronym)
is not really a party — that would imply the existence of other parties.
Neither is the PCC primarily an electoral party although it does firmly control
from the top the periodic so-called elections that always result in the
unanimous approval of the political course followed by the authorities.
Sometimes people disillusioned with the existing corrupt parties in Latin
America and even in the United States itself, react with indifference if not
approval to the Cuban one-party state because they perceive elections as
reinforcing corrupt systems. Thus such people think that is better to have one
honest political party that works than a corrupt multi-party system that
doesn’t work. The problem with this type of thinking is that one-party
bureaucratic systems do not work well at all, except perhaps to thoroughly
repress any opposition. Moreover, corruption sooner or later works its way into
the single party system as history has repeatedly shown. In the case of Cuba,
Fidel Castro himself warned in a famous speech on November 17, 2005, that the revolution
was in greater danger to perish because of endemic corruption than because of
the actions of counterrevolutionaries.
The organizational monopoly of the PCC — explicitly sanctioned by the Cuban
constitution — affects far more than elections. It extends its power in
a highly authoritarian manner to control Cuban society through the
so-called mass organizations that function as transmission belts for the
decisions taken by the PCC’s Political Bureau. For example, the CTC, the
official trade union, is the transmission belt that allows the Cuban state to
maintain its monopoly of the organization of Cuban workers. Beyond enforcing
the prohibition of strikes, the CTC is not an organization for the defense of
working class interests as determined by the workers themselves. Rather, it was
established to advance what the ruling PCC leadership determines are the
workers’ best interests.
The same control mechanisms apply to other “mass
organizations” such as the Federation of Cuban Women (FMC) and to other
institutions such as editorial houses, universities and the rest of the educational
system. The mass media (radio, television and newspapers) continue to be under
the control of the government, guided in their coverage by the “orientations” of the Ideological Department of the
Central Committee of the PCC. There are however, two important exceptions to
the state’s control of media organs: one, is the internal publications of the
Catholic Church. Nevertheless, the Cuban Catholic hierarchy is extremely
cautious, and the circulation of its publications is in any case limited to its
parishes and other Catholic institutions. A far more important exception
is the Internet, which the government has yet been unable to place under its
absolute control and remains as the principal vehicle for critical and
dissident voices. It was precisely this less than full control of the Internet
that made the nationwide politically explosive outbreaks of July 11 possible.
Where is Cuba Going?
Without the benefit of Fidel Castro’s presence and the degree of legitimacy
retained by the historic leadership, Díaz-Canel and the other new government
leaders were politically hit hard by the events of July 11,
even though they received the shameful support of most of the broad
international Left. The fact that people no longer seem to be afraid may be the
single largest threat for the government emerging from the events on July 11. In spite of that blow, the new leadership is on course
to continue Raúl Castro’s orientation to develop a Cuban version of the
Sino-Vietnamese model, which combine a high degree of political
authoritarianism with concessions to private and especially
foreign capital.
At the same time, the Cuban government leaders will continue to follow
inconsistent and even contradictory economic reform policies for fear of losing
control to Cuban private capital. The government recently authorized
the creation of private PYMES (small and medium private enterprises), but it
would not be at all surprising if many of the newly created PYMES end up in the
hands of important state functionaries turned private capitalists. There is an
important government stratum composed of business managers and technicians with
ample experience in such sectors as tourism, particularly in the military. The
most important among them is the 61-year-old Gen.
Alberto Rodríguez López-Calleja, a former son-in-law of Raúl Castro, who
is the director of GAESA, the huge military business conglomerate, which
includes Gaviota, the principal tourist enterprise in the island. It is
significant that he recently became a member of the Political Bureau of
the PCC.
Perhaps this younger generation of business military and civilian
bureaucrats may try to overcome the rentier mentality that 30 years
of ample Soviet assistance created among the Cuban leadership as witnessed the
failure to modernize and diversify the sugar industry (as Brazil did) during
those relatively prosperous years that ended in 1990. To
be sure, the U.S. economic blockade contributed to the rentier mentality by
encouraging a day-to-day economic survival attitude rather than of
increasing the productivity of the Cuban economy to allow for a more
prosperous future.
Finally, what about the United States? Biden is unlikely to do much in his
first term to change the United States’ imperialist policies towards Cuba that
were significantly aggravated by Trump. Whether a possible second
Democratic administration in Washington beginning in 2025
will do anything different remains an open question.
There is, however, a paradox underlying the U.S. government’s Cuba
policy. While U.S. policy is not at present primarily driven by ruling class
interests but, rather, by electoral considerations, particularly in the highly
contested state of Florida, it is not for that reason necessarily less harsh
or, what is more alarming, less durable. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, probably
the most politically active business institution in the United States has
advocated the resumption of normal business relations with Cuba for many years.
Thomas J. Donohue, its long-time director who retired earlier this year,
visited Cuba in numerous occasions and met with government leaders there. Big
agribusiness concerns are also interested in doing business with Cuba as are
agricultural and other business interests in the South, Southwest and Mountain
States represented by both Republican and Democratic politicians. However, it
is doubtful that they are inclined to expend a lot of political capital in
achieving that goal.
This places a heavy extra burden on the U.S. Left to overcome the
deadlock, which clearly favors the indefinite continuation of the blockade,
through a new type of campaign that both zeroes in on the grave aggression
and injustice committed against the Cuban people without at the same time
becoming apologists for the political leadership of the Cuban state.
Be that as it may, people on the Left in the United States have two key
tasks. First, they should firmly oppose the criminal economic blockade of Cuba.
Second, they should support the democratic rights of the Cuban people rather
than an ossified police state, in the same way that they have supported the
struggle for human rights, democracy, and radical social and economic change in
Colombia and Chile in Latin America as well as Myanmar and Hong Kong
in Asia.
On july 11th thousands of
protesters took to the streets spontaneously in more than 50 Cuban towns and
cities. They had a long litany of grievances: recurring electricity shortages,
empty grocery shops, a failing economy, a repressive government and an
increasingly desperate situation regarding covid-19. In a display of discontent
not seen on the communist island for perhaps six decades, people of all ages chanted
and marched, some of them to the tune of clanging spoons and frying pans. They
shouted “Patria y Vida!” (Fatherland and Life)—a riff on the revolutionary
slogan “Patria o Muerte” (Fatherland or Death), and the name of a rap song
which criticises the government—along with “Libertad!” (Freedom) and “Abajo la
dictadura!” (Down with the dictatorship).
Although protests continue, by the
next day cities were quieter as the police went from house to house, rounding
up the demonstration leaders. Riot police spread out across cities,
plainclothes officers took to the streets and pro-government mobs brandishing
images of Fidel Castro were called in to chant revolutionary slogans and wave
Cuban flags. Miguel Díaz-Canel, the president and first secretary of the Communist Party,
appeared on television to declare: “Cuba belongs to its revolutionaries.” Around
150 people have gone missing, and one protester has been killed. There are
rumours that young men are being forcibly conscripted into the army.
The big question is how much staying
power the protests will have. The coming weeks will show whether the regime’s
stock response of swatting down any signs of dissent will work again. The
government has little leeway to buy social peace. Cuba has been badly hit by
covid-19 and by a precipitous drop in tourism, on which it heavily depends. A
lack of foreign currency with which to buy imports has led to acute food shortages and blackouts. Under
the administration of Donald Trump, the United States tightened sanctions on
Cuba. These have added a little to the island’s longstanding economic troubles.
Cuba’s reluctance to buy foreign
vaccines, born of a mix of autarky and a shortage of cash, means that only 16%
of the population is fully inoculated. Home-grown vaccines are being developed, but
have not yet been fully rolled out; meanwhile, pharmacies are short even of
basics like aspirin. Whereas tourism has resumed in nearby places where
covid-19 has receded, such as Jamaica and the Dominican Republic, Cuba is
suffering from rising infections. Even the official data show the number of new
cases doubling every seven days. In a video posted to Facebook, Lisveilys
Echenique, who lives in the city of Ciego de Ávila, described how her brother
spent 11 days battling covid-19 without treatment because he could get neither
medicine nor a hospital bed. After he died, his corpse remained in her home for
seven hours before an ambulance arrived.
The Cuban economy came close to
collapse in the early 1990s, after the fall of the Soviet Union brought foreign
aid to an abrupt halt. There were public protests then, too, which were quickly
dispersed. But Cubans now have access to the internet and are adept at using it
to mobilise. Videos of police violence and arbitrary arrests have been
circulating rapidly in recent days. At one point in the afternoon of July 11th,
as the protests reached their height, the authorities appeared to block all
internet access. Some social-messaging sites have also been suspended.
But much as the government may wish
to turn the internet off, it cannot afford to: the exorbitant access fees
charged by the state telecoms monopoly are an important source of foreign
exchange. The internet is also a vital conduit for remittances from Cubans
abroad. Mobile data and Wi-Fi charges bring in perhaps $80m a month for the
government, estimates Emilio Morales of Havana Consulting Group in Miami.
“The government has closed itself up
like an oyster,” says José Jasán Nieves Cárdenas, editor of El Toque, a Cuban magazine mostly published online.
“Instead of acknowledging that it has to come out and establish a dialogue with
its people, it has chosen repression.” Tear gas and rubber bullets were used
against crowds, although in some instances security officers were so
outnumbered by protesters that they were forced to retreat. As things
escalated, police cars were overturned and some dollar stores, symbols of the
regime’s economic incompetence, were ransacked.
Mr Díaz-Canel blames Cuba’s troubles
on the embargo imposed by the United States, as the government always does. He
has ignored the complaints of the protesters, dismissing them as mercenaries,
and offered excuses rather than plans for reform. After the president gave a
speech on July 12th more protesters gathered outside the Capitol building in
Havana. Other than stepping down, there is not much Mr Díaz-Canel could do to
make amends to his people, says the owner of a small business. “You can’t cover
the sun with one finger,” she says. Rumours are circulating that even members
of the police are starting to defy their orders, as some think the protesters
have a point.
Alfred Martínez Ramírez, a member of 27n, a group of activists, artists and intellectuals campaigning for greater freedom of expression, joined a protest outside the Ministry of Culture in November. Some 300 people were present, which at the time seemed a huge number. Cubans rarely protest, not least because unauthorised public gatherings are illegal. Seeing thousands of people on the streets of Havana and elsewhere in Cuba gives Mr Martínez Ramírez hope that his group is not alone, and that they may have even helped many others overcome their fear of dissent. “There has been an awakening,” he says.
En días pasados estallaron protestas sociales en diversas localidades de Cuba. Para los dirigentes cubanos y los medios oficiales de prensa que responden al gobierno cubano, se trata de “disturbios, desorden, causados por una operación comunicacional que se prepara desde hace tiempo”, propiciados por “mercenarios al servicio del imperialismo”. Sin embargo, más allá de una retórica que se basa en el no reconocimiento de la realidad política, económica y social que vive el país y en achacar la responsabilidad de las protestas, denominadas desórdenes -aunque los hubo como en todas las protestas-, a agentes al servicio de intereses extranjeros, Cuba enfrenta desde hace muchos años una crisis económica y social de graves proporciones que se ha transformado en una crisis política. Es imprescindible debatir acerca de las causas pero también abrir un debate sobre las alternativas y posibles soluciones, con el objeto de evitar que el país llegue a un callejón sin salida.
Las
razones económicas.
La
situación económica actual de Cuba es la más terrible desde el llamado Período
Especial de los años noventa del pasado siglo. En 2020, el Producto Interior
Bruto (PIB) cayó un 11,3% pero ya en 2019 se había producido una caída del 0,2%
y el crecimiento promedio anual entre 2015 y 2019 fue de solo 1,7%, lo cual es
insuficiente para asegurar una senda de desarrollo económico. El gobierno
cubano ha insistido en responsabilizar al bloqueo estadounidense y a los
efectos de la pandemia con la situación económica del país. El recrudecimiento
de las sanciones económicas durante la administración de Trump y la aparición y
ahora el empeoramiento de la pandemia han tenido efectos nocivos indudables en
la economía cubana, sin embargo, no son los responsables de los graves
problemas estructurales que ésta padece.
A lo
largo de más de seis décadas se han ido acumulando serios problemas que
dependen, principalmente, de los sucesivos errores de política económica
cometidos por la dirección del país, que han conducido a un incremento de la
vulnerabilidad externa de la economía cubana y han dificultado el desarrollo de
la producción nacional, debido a la excesiva centralización de las decisiones
económicas, a la incapacidad para generar suficientes estímulos al desarrollo
productivo y a los frenos que se han impuesto al emprendimiento.
Las
reformas económicas que se han realizado desde los años noventa han sido
parciales e insuficientes, no han abordado los cambios estructurales de forma
sistémica y no han apuntado a la promoción del emprendimiento empresarial. La
mayor parte de las ramas de la industria nacional y varias de las más
importantes producciones agropecuarias en 2019 tenían niveles inferiores a los
de 1989. A partir de la crisis de los noventa el gobierno optó por el
desarrollo del turismo. Fue una decisión parcialmente correcta pero lo que no
debió ocurrir es que ese desarrollo obviara las necesidades del desarrollo
industrial y agrícola del país.
La
excesiva dependencia respecto al turismo es una causa estructural fundamental
en la debacle actual de una economía que prácticamente carece de reservas y de
alternativas productivas, con una industria azucarera que está produciendo a
niveles de principios del siglo XX, con el resto de la industria prácticamente
colapsada y con una agricultura afectada por una estructura de precios y
excesivos controles que desestimulan el desarrollo de la producción de
alimentos y de materias primas.
Con
campañas políticas no se resuelven los problemas de la producción. El país está
importando gran parte de los alimentos que podría producir y carece de las
divisas necesarias para importarlos. Para colmo, se insiste en el control
monopólico estatal del comercio exterior. Sigue sin dar los pasos necesarios
para promover la legalización de pequeñas y medianas empresas privadas que
promuevan el emprendimiento y canalicen el empleo superfluo que es una excesiva
carga al presupuesto del Estado. Persisten en la planificación centralizada en
condiciones de una inmensa escasez y no generan otras alternativas. En los años
noventa el turismo fue una alternativa y a comienzos del siglo XXI, la
exportación de servicios profesionales, principalmente a Venezuela, se
convirtió en otra opción muy importante de ingresos en divisas. Estos junto a
las remesas, aseguraron la subsistencia económica del país.
En la
actualidad, el turismo está en niveles mínimos, las remesas afectadas por las
limitaciones de sus fuentes debido a problemas económicos de los remitentes y
al endurecimiento de las sanciones durante la era de Trump, mientras que los
ingresos por exportaciones de servicios están afectados por su cierre en
ciertos países pero sobre todo por la terrible crisis económica venezolana.
Entonces, el gobierno no ha querido salirse del guión que ha determinado la
política económica, ha actuado con muchísima lentitud y ha adoptado medidas
económicas equivocadas.
Los
errores más recientes de política económica.
A lo
largo de estas décadas se han acumulado una serie de errores de política
económica, pero en las condiciones actuales quisiera concentrarme en dos: 1) la
llamada Tarea Ordenamiento y 2) la apertura de tiendas en monedas libremente
convertibles (MLC) para la venta de productos que originalmente se describían
como “suntuarios” pero que en realidad resultaron de primera necesidad, no solo
para las condiciones de la vida moderna sino incluso para la subsistencia.
El
llamado Ordenamiento monetario no fue tal. Desde hace tiempo muchos economistas
hemos destacado la necesidad de abolir la dualidad monetaria por el desorden en
los sistemas de costos, en el funcionamiento de las empresas y en el
establecimiento de precios relativos respecto a la economía internacional.
Adoptaron la unificación monetaria y cambiaria como un lineamiento del 6º
Congreso del PCC en 2011 y finalmente en 2021 decidieron unificar los tipos de
cambio a una tasa sobrevaluada, a la cual el Banco Central no puede asegurar la
venta de la divisa extranjera, con lo que, inmediatamente, se desarrolló el
mercado negro de divisas en el que el dólar se cotiza a varias veces por encima
del valor oficial.
En lugar
de establecer la soberanía del peso cubano como moneda nacional, crearon
tiendas en MLC, re-dolarizando parcialmente la economía y vendiendo en ese
mercado bienes a los cuales no tiene acceso la población que carece de remesas
o de opciones de ingresos en divisas, generando un grave problema social debido
a la marginación de un sector considerable de la población en la capacidad de
adquirir dichos bienes.
La
unificación cambiaria llegó acompañada de un incremento de salarios en el
sector estatal y de pensiones en niveles claramente inferiores a los
incrementos reales en los precios, producidos por una estampida inflacionaria,
lo cual ha causado gran insatisfacción en una parte considerable de la
ciudadanía que continúa sin asegurar sus necesidades básicas a partir de sus
ingresos debidos al trabajo.
Los
problemas sociales.
La
insatisfacción creada por los errores de política económica y la persistencia
de los mismos a veces ha podido canalizarse por los mecanismos controlados por
el poder pero ni esas ni aquellas que ni siquiera han podido ser planteadas
oficialmente sino que se expresan en redes sociales, han tenido una respuesta
creíble más allá de achacar al bloqueo de todo cuanto no funciona. No se trata
de anexionistas, ni de delincuentes, ni de agentes de alguna potencia
extranjera. Se trata simplemente de ciudadanos cubanos que necesitan satisfacer
aspiraciones en la única vida probada que tienen y que sienten que el gobierno
del país no está siendo capaz de ofrecer las alternativas de solución
necesarias.
La
sociedad cubana de hoy es claramente diferente a la que decidió permanecer en
el país tras el triunfo revolucionario. Existe un porcentaje creciente de
jóvenes, que están a dos o tres generaciones de la que hizo la Revolución y que
tiene esperanzas de vida, intereses, aspiraciones y proyecciones políticas y
sociales propias y muy probablemente diferentes y a las que incluso la
Constitución actual les priva del derecho a definir el tipo de Estado y de
sociedad que prefiere. Y dentro de este grupo, existe una parte considerable de
personas que viven en condiciones de subsistencia y no ve opciones de
mejoramiento de las mismas.
En otras
oportunidades, la emigración, incluso con cierto nivel de masividad, como
ocurrió en los primeros años sesenta, en 1980 y en 1994, ha actuado como
válvula de escape para solucionar las insatisfacciones individuales, pero
también para reducir el factor de oposición social interna. En esta ocasión
esta posibilidad está claramente muy limitada.
La
emigración carece de derechos políticos, pero a ella se ha apelado, una y otra
vez, para que haga valer sus derechos al envío de remesas familiares pero sin
reconocerla socialmente como un factor importante para la solución de los
problemas económicos del país y sin integrarla políticamente en un sistema
democrático. La emigración es un factor decisivo en la solución de muchos de
los problemas económicos del país y también debería ser un importante actor
político a partir de su experiencia en otras realidades.
En la
sociedad cubana existe una parte considerable que carece de opciones y de
perspectivas, que vive en una situación de pobreza que no es reconocida
públicamente por las autoridades cubanas. En consecuencia, gran parte de esa
población salió a las calles como explosión de una situación de hastío. Sin
embargo, hay que tener en cuenta que antes de eso ya se habían producido una
serie de indicios de protesta pacífica en diversos sectores sociales, incluidos
los artistas, reclamando espacios de diálogo que solo han encontrado la
intolerancia y el rechazo como respuesta.
Los
problemas políticos.
Todo este
conjunto de cuestiones ha llevado a una crisis política de la cual estas
protestas públicas han sido solo un primer momento, si consideramos su
capacidad de difusión y su masividad. Sin embargo, existe una parte de la
sociedad cubana inconforme con la situación del país que no se expresa por
miedo a las consecuencias negativas que pueden sufrir debido a una cultura
arraigada de exclusión de las opciones políticas diferentes a las defendidas
desde las estructuras de poder. El gobierno cubano debería considerar esta
realidad política y actuar en consecuencia si realmente quiere evitar que la
fractura social y política en la sociedad cubana se profundice y supere el nivel
de polarización que ya es gravísimo.
En 2019
se adoptó una nueva Constitución que establece en su artículo 1 que “Cuba es un
Estado socialista de derecho y justicia social, democrático, independiente y
soberano, organizado con todos y para el bien de todos como república unitaria
e indivisible, fundada en el trabajo, la dignidad, el humanismo y la ética de
sus ciudadanos para el disfrute de la libertad, la equidad, la igualdad, la
solidaridad, el bienestar y la prosperidad individual y colectiva”. Sin
embargo, existen ejemplos que demuestran que muchos de esos preceptos no
reflejan la realidad política del país.
El
artículo 5 de la carta magna le otorga al Partido Comunista de Cuba, la
condición de “fuerza política superior de la sociedad y del Estado”, lo cual,
en la práctica, coloca al Partido por encima de la sociedad. Esta realidad no
tiene nada de democrática, toda vez que tampoco el Partido Comunista es una
organización democrática en su vida interna.
En esa
misma Constitución se garantizan el derecho a la vida, la integridad física y
moral, la libertad, la justicia y la seguridad …. (artículo 46); el derecho a
que se respete su intimidad personal y familiar … (artículo 48); a la
inviolabilidad de su domicilio (artículo 49); a la inviolabilidad de la correspondencia
y demás formas de comunicación (artículo 50); las personas no puede ser
sometidas a desaparición forzada, torturas ni tratos o penas crueles inhumanas
o degradantes (artículo 51); el Estado reconoce, respeta y garantiza a las
personas la libertad de pensamiento, conciencia y expresión (artículo 54); se
reconoce la libertad de prensa (artículo 55); los derechos de reunión,
manifestación y asociación, con fines lícitos y pacíficos, se reconocen por el
Estado siempre que se ejerzan con respeto al orden público y el acatamiento a
las preceptivas establecidas en la ley (artículo 56); se reconocen a las
personas los derechos derivados de la creación intelectual (artículo 62); los
ciudadanos cubanos tienen derecho a participar en la conformación, ejercicio y
control del poder del Estado, lo cual implica: estar inscriptos en el registro
electoral, proponer y nominar candidatos, elegir y ser elegidos, participar en
las elecciones, plebiscitos, referendos, consultas populares y otras formas de
participación democrática, pronunciarse sobre la rendición de cuenta que le
presentan los elegidos, ejercer la iniciativa legislativa y de reforma de la
Constitución, desempeñar cargos públicos y estar informados de la gestión de
los órganos y autoridades del Estado (artículo 80).
La mayor
parte de estos artículos, relacionados con derechos humanos y políticos está
sin reglamentar, pero al margen de esto, la propia Constitución contradice
algunos de esos derechos. Por ejemplo, la libertad de elegir y ser elegidos,
mediante el voto de los ciudadanos es restringida por el inciso “c” del
artículo 205 que establece como excepción a “los que no cumplan el requisito de
residencia en el país previstos en la ley”. Es decir, a los cubanos residentes
en el exterior, que constituyen más de un 20% de la población actual del país y
cuyas remesas han contribuido a la subsistencia del país, se les niega ese
derecho elemental que está consagrado en la mayor parte de las constituciones
de las repúblicas latinoamericanas. De igual forma, la iniciativa legislativa y
la reforma de la Constitución, contenidas también en el artículo 80 son
restringidas por el artículo 227 que trata sobre la iniciativa para promover
reformas a la Constitución, porque la iniciativa de los ciudadanos debe ser “mediante
petición dirigida a la Asamblea Nacional, firmada por un mínimo de 50.000
electores”, además de que la Constitución solo puede ser reformada por la
Asamblea Nacional en una “votación nominal no menor a dos terceras partes del
número total de sus integrantes”, es decir, que no permite que la Constitución
sea reformada o elaborada por una Asamblea Constituyente, elegida libremente
por la ciudadanía, tal y como ocurrió en 1940. Si la Asamblea Nacional es
elegida con base a una lista única que responde a las orientaciones del Partido
Comunista, es fácil intuir que sería imposible contar con ella para reformar
una constitución hecha a la medida de los intereses de la dirigencia de dicho
partido, que no necesariamente se corresponde con los intereses reales de parte
de su membresía.
A
diferencia de la mayor parte de los países latinoamericanos, los ciudadanos
cubanos carecen del derecho a elegir, mediante sufragio universal y directo,
entre varias alternativas, al Presidente y Vicepresidente de la República, a
los diputados a la Asamblea Nacional, y a las autoridades de gobierno
provinciales y municipales.
Las leyes
cubanas posteriores a 1959 no han permitido el derecho a la huelga, ni a la
formación de asociaciones sociales, profesionales o políticas que estén por
fuera del control del poder político, con lo cual se conculcan los derechos
proclamados en los artículos 54 y 56 de la Constitución.
Así, en
las cuestiones relativas a los derechos políticos, la Constitución de 2019, al igual
que la de 1976, retroceden respecto a la de 1940 que, dicho sea de paso, fue el
resultado de una Asamblea Constituyente, elegida democráticamente, en la que
también participaron delegados comunistas junto a otros del amplio espectro de
fuerzas políticas que caracterizaba a la sociedad cubana de entonces.
La
Constitución de 2019 fue aprobada en referendo nacional por una mayoría
significativa de la población, pero en su proceso de discusión y debate, solo
tuvo cabida la pedagogía del SI y en dicho referendo no se permitió votar a la
población cubana residente en el exterior que aun ostenta un pasaporte cubano.
Hasta en el régimen pinochetista en Chile se permitió la pedagogía del NO.
En los
tiempos recientes han ocurrido varios episodios en los que autoridades cubanas
han violado la Constitución aprobada por esa inmensa mayoría alcanzada entre
aquellos que tuvieron la oportunidad de ejercer su derecho al voto. Se han
producido detenciones de ciudadanos por el simple hecho de caminar por una
calle portando un cartel que exige la libertad para alguna persona detenida;
han sido detenidas personas por expresar su inconformidad y rechazo al sistema
político; fuerzas de la policía han obligado, de forma ilegal, a ciudadanos que
no están condenados judicialmente, a permanecer en sus casas en contra de su
voluntad y cuando éstos se han negado alegando su derecho a la libre movilidad,
han sido detenidos; no se han atendido solicitudes de hábeas corpus, a pesar de
que esta figura jurídica está presente en la nueva Constitución y es un derecho
universalmente reconocido en las sociedades civilizadas; se mantiene la
práctica de expulsar de ciertos centros de trabajo a personas que expresan
opiniones contrarias a las que se sostienen desde el poder político, incluso cuando
en algunos casos esas opiniones ni siquiera han cuestionado la esencia del
sistema político y social; se ha promovido y en otros casos, permitido
situaciones de hostigamiento a personas identificadas como desafectas al
gobierno del país; para solo mencionar algunos ejemplos de violaciones de la
ley suprema de la República, generadas desde las estructuras de poder, que
deberían ser sus garantes ante la sociedad.
Desde las
estructuras de poder se ha dicho que las manifestaciones del 11-J han sido
orquestadas desde el exterior. Es cierto y además público que algunos llamados
“influencer” de ciertas redes sociales ha realizado llamados a la desobediencia
civil y a la insurrección. Sin embargo, si fuera cierto que estas protestas
fueron el resultado de estos llamados y de la labor de zapa del gobierno de los
Estados Unidos, esto podría significar que el Partido Comunista carece del
liderazgo y la influencia que en Cuba que se establece como precepto
constitucional. Argumentar que las protestas fueron orquestadas desde el
exterior es un insulto a la ciudadanía y a su derecho a expresar un descontento
que antes no ha encontrado otras vías de canalización, debido a la soberbia, al
autismo y al escaso espíritu autocrítico de muchos de los que ejercen
responsabilidades de dirección en el país y que mantienen un discurso alejado
de la realidad del país.
Las
protestas sociales, a diferencia de lo que se sostiene desde el discurso
oficial, fueron el resultado de la combinación de todos esos factores a los que
se suma el hastío de muchos ciudadanos que no encuentran una salida
esperanzadora a una situación de crisis que persiste en la sociedad cubana
desde hace varias décadas pero que en las circunstancias actuales ha cobrado
una gravedad extraordinaria.
En las protestas hubo saqueos y destrucción de propiedad pública y privada, que no fueron masivos. ¿En cuáles protestas no ocurren? Es lamentable y condenable. Sin embargo, vale la pena llamar la atención sobre cuales han sido los objetos de estos actos deplorables. En unos casos, fueron algunas tiendas en MLC, que son un símbolo evidente de la diferenciación social establecida en Cuba entre los que tienen acceso a ellas y los que no, por el solo hecho de no disponer de cuentas en una moneda que no se obtiene como resultado del trabajo sino que proviene de remesas desde el exterior. Se produjo el volcamiento y destrucción de algunos automóviles de la policía y de instituciones oficiales. También se produjeron enfrentamientos entre fuerzas antimotines y de policía, tanto uniformados como vestidos de civil y los ciudadanos que protestaban. Las imágenes de supuestos civiles, perfectamente organizados, transportados en vehículos públicos y armados de palos y bates de béisbol para golpear a quienes protestaban son una muestra del insulto que ese día se profirió contra el ideario de la Revolución Cubana. Y la orden fue proferida desde el más alto nivel de dirección del país. No es la primera vez que esto ocurre, sin embargo, si es la ocasión en la que alcanzó las mayores proporciones.
Las
opciones.
A pesar
de la profundidad de la fractura social y política del 11-J y del nivel de
polarización que ha alcanzado la sociedad cubana, para bien del país, la
política debería imponerse a la golpiza.
Me opongo
a los llamados a una intervención militar extranjera que solo causaría sangre y
dolor a las familias cubanas y también en las de quienes, eventualmente,
pudieran intervenir. Y me opongo a la represión militar, policial y paramilitar
ejercida por quienes tienen el deber de proteger la seguridad del pueblo y no
mancillarlo. La vida y la dignidad deben ser preservadas.
Siento un
profundo compromiso con la idea original que inspiró la Revolución Cubana, es
decir, la democracia y la justicia social. La democracia nos ha sido confiscada
y la justicia social se despedaza en cada medida que crea excluidos en nuestra
Nación.
Una
opción que parece imponerse en el discurso oficial es la de reprimir a quienes
han sido identificados como participantes de las protestas y hacer caer sobre
ellos el peso de cuestionables figuras jurídicas, y de paso, amedrentar a
quienes pudieran protagonizar eventos similares en el futuro con medidas
ejemplarizantes. Esta opción solo profundizará la fractura de la sociedad y
solo postergaría una futura crisis política y social que podría tener
gravísimas consecuencias.
Otra
opción, que considero necesaria, sería liberar a todas las personas que han
sido detenidas por las protestas y antes de las mismas, por expresar su
desacuerdo con el gobierno o con el sistema político actualmente vigente. A fin
de cuentas, ellos no realizaron un asalto armado a un cuartel del ejército. No
hay que reprimir al descontento sino crear las condiciones para que el
descontento pueda ser convertido en satisfacción y esperanza o que al menos ese
descontento tenga vías legítimas de expresión, y ello pasa necesariamente por
una reconfiguración pacífica de nuestro sistema político.
La
Constitución actual no satisface las aspiraciones democráticas de todo el
pueblo, precisamente porque excluye a una parte del mismo en el derecho a
ejercer su soberanía por lo cual debe ser enmendada, aunque en mi opinión
debería ser elaborada una nueva que garantice el establecimiento de un sistema
democrático. Para esta enmienda, el elemento inicial debería ser la reforma de
los artículos 205, 226 y 227.
En el 205
debería eliminarse la excepción en el derecho al voto de los ciudadanos cubanos
residentes fuera del país. En el 226 debería permitirse que la Constitución sea
reformada por una Asamblea Constituyente, elegida libremente por la ciudadanía,
mediante sufragio universal, además de la actual facultad de la Asamblea
Nacional. En el 227 debería modificarse el inciso f que le otorga iniciativa a
la ciudadanía para la reforma constitucional solo como petición a la Asamblea
Nacional, mediante la recolección de 50.000 firmas, y permitir que estas firmas
puedan ser válidas para la convocatoria de una Asamblea Constituyente.
En tales
circunstancias y para hacer valer el carácter democrático del Estado que define
el artículo 1 de la Constitución, debería convocarse a una consulta nacional
vinculante, en la que puedan participar todos los ciudadanos cubanos sin
distinción de lugar de residencia e identificados con un pasaporte cubano
válido vigente y en la que los electores puedan escoger una de dos alternativas
que podrían ser: a) Desea Usted que la Constitución vigente se mantenga como
está y que su posible reforma posterior solo sea una facultad de la Asamblea
Nacional del Poder Popular; y b) Desea Usted que se convoque a una Asamblea
Constituyente, elegida mediante sufragio universal directo y secreto con
candidatos nominados o auto-nominados libremente, que elabore una nueva
Constitución.
Lo
verdaderamente revolucionario, lo verdaderamente progresista, no solo es la
urgente necesidad de liberar las fuerzas productivas y el emprendimiento
productivo que pueda iniciar la recuperación de la economía y encauzar el
proceso de desarrollo, sino también resulta urgente la construcción de un nuevo
consenso político, sobre la base del establecimiento de una sociedad
verdaderamente democrática en la que tengan cabida las diferencias políticas y
el imperio de la ley y de la justicia social.
mauriciodemiranda
La
Habana, 1 de abril de 1958. Doctor en Economía Internacional y Desarrollo,
Universidad Complutense de Madrid, España. Licenciado en Economía, Universidad
de La Habana, Cuba. Profesor Titular del Departamento de Economía de la
Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Cali, Colombia. Ver
todas las entradas de mauriciodemiranda
HAVANA, June 21 (Reuters) – Cuba said on Monday its three-shot Abdala
vaccine against the coronavirus had proved 92.28% effective in last-stage
clinical trials. The announcement came
just days after the government said another homegrown vaccine, Soberana 2, had
proved 62% effective with just two of its three doses.
“Hit by the pandemic, our scientists at the Finlay Institute and
Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology have risen above all the
obstacles and given us two very effective vaccines,” President Miguel
Diaz-Canel tweeted.
The announcement came from state-run biopharmaceutical corporation
BioCubaFarma, which oversees Finlay, the maker of Soberana 2, and the Center
for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, the producer of Abdala. Both vaccines
are expected to be granted emergency authority by local regulators shortly.
Cuba, whose biotech sector has exported vaccines for decades, has five
coronavirus vaccine candidates.
The Caribbean’s largest island is facing its worst COVID-19 outbreak
since the start of the pandemic following the arrival of more contagious
variants, setting new records for daily coronavirus cases.
The Communist-run country has opted not to import foreign vaccines but
to rely on its own. Some experts said it was a risky bet but it appears to have
paid off, putting Cuba in position to burnish its scientific reputation,
generate much-needed hard currency through exports and strengthen the
vaccination drive worldwide.
Several countries from Argentina and Jamaica to Mexico, Vietnam and
Venezuela have expressed an interest in buying Cuba’s vaccines. Iran started
producing Soberana 2 earlier this year as part of late-phase clinical trials.
Cuba’s authorities have already started administering the experimental
vaccines en masse as part of “intervention studies” they hope will
slow the spread of the virus. About a
million of the country’s 11.2 million residents have been fully vaccinated to
date.
Daily cases have halved in the capital, Havana, since the start of the
vaccination campaign a month ago, using Abdala, according to official data. Cuba has reported a total of 169,365 COVID-19
cases and 1,170 deaths.
Cuba has
begun a mass Covid-19 vaccination drive using two homegrown shots before they
have full regulatory approval, after declaring a health emergency as cases
surge.
The
government said it aimed to vaccinate the entire adult population with its
Abdala and Soberana 2 shots. The programme began in Havana on Wednesday for
residents aged 60 years or older, with frontline workers in other provinces
also receiving the vaccines.
The Pan
American Health Organization said this week that Cuba was driving most new
Covid-19 infections in the Caribbean. Although case rates in the
communist-ruled nation have been low by international standards, it recorded
its worst month for infections in April since the pandemic began, with 31,346
cases and 229 deaths among its 11m population. The number has continued to
creep up this month.
José
Angel Portal Miranda, public health minister, said he expected full approval
for both vaccines in June but that Cuban law allowed the step to be bypassed in
an emergency. “This makes it possible to initiate intervention in risk groups
and territories with Cuban vaccine candidates,” he said after announcing the
emergency last Friday.
Abdala’s
phase 3 trials — the final stage before regulatory approval is normally sought
— ended on May 1 while those for Soberana 2 will be completed this weekend.
More than 300,000 Cubans have been vaccinated to date, including trial participants
and frontline workers.
Cuban
health authorities say both shots have proved safe and highly effective but
have not released trial data.
Cuba
opted not to join the World Health Organization-backed Covax vaccine
procurement facility or accept jabs from allies such as Russia and China. The
island nation has been manufacturing vaccines for years and authorities cite
long experience and a policy of not depending on others as behind the decision.
All but
bankrupted by US economic sanctions and
the Covid-induced crisis, Cuba is suffering its worst economic crisis since the
collapse of the Soviet Union three decades ago. The economy declined 11 per
cent last year and local economists said it continued to lose ground during the
first quarter as the pandemic crippled tourism, which accounts for about 11 per
cent of gross domestic product.
Both of
Cuba’s vaccines require two doses, and a third booster shot has been added to
combat new variants of the virus.
Portal
Miranda said 70 per cent of the population would be vaccinated by September and
the remainder by the end of the year.
Patients
and medics preparing for vaccination on Wednesday expressed confidence in the
programme. Physiotherapist Vladimir Lahenes did not believe Abdala, named after
a famous poem by national revolutionary hero José Martí, which he was about to
receive in the Havana municipality of Playa de Este, would prove unsafe or
ineffective.
“Here
there’s lots of experience with Cuban vaccines. Everyone knows, everyone is
confident,” he said.
Family
doctor Yolanda, who asked that her full name not be used, said she had been
preparing for weeks. “I have been giving Cuban vaccines forever. I’m already
vaccinated and very glad my patients will now be too,” she said.
Eduardo
Martínez Díaz, president of BioCubaFarma, the state pharmaceutical monopoly,
said last week that Cuba “will probably be the first country to immunise its
entire population with its own vaccine”.
“We are seeing a safety profile
with the vaccine [Soberana 2] that is very good,” Dr. Vicente Verez,
director of the Finlay Institute of Vaccines, told NBC News.
HAVANA —
Cuba is “betting it safe” with the later development of their own
Covid-19 vaccines and encouraged by what they’re seeing in late stage and experimental
studies, a top Cuban vaccine scientist said.
If the
trials are successful, the relatively small, communist island of 11 million —
that has been sanctioned by the United States for decades — would be one of
just very few countries with vaccines to fight the coronavirus pandemic,
drawing worldwide attention to its potential feat.
The other
countries that have developed vaccines, including the United States, the United
Kingdom, China, Russia and India, have significantly larger economies and
population sizes.
Two of
Cuba’s five vaccine candidates are in Phase 3 trials: Soberana 2, which
translates to ‘sovereignty,’ and Abdala, named after a book by the Cuban independence
hero José Martí.
Around
44,000 people are getting the Soberana 2 vaccine as part of the Phase 3
double-blind study. An additional 150,000 health care workers are being
inoculated with Soberana 2 as part of an “interventional study.”
Unlike
the mRNA vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, the Soberana 2 uses
synthesized coronavirus proteins to trigger the body’s immune system.
“We are
seeing that the vaccine is very safe, the potential risk for applying it to
more people is decreasing, and the potential benefits are increasing. There is
evidence of certain efficacy and that is why we decided to expand the
interventional studies,” Dr. Vicente Verez, director of the Finlay Institute of
Vaccines, told NBC News. The institute is named after the Cuban epidemiologist
Dr. Carlos Finlay who discovered yellow fever is transmitted through
mosquitoes.
The
institute was established in 1991 by the late Cuban leader Fidel Castro who
invested heavily in the country’s health care system and pharmaceutical sector.
Its cancer research center developed a vaccine being tested in the United
States and other countries.
In Cuba,
“we began a bit later than the rest of the vaccines [in the world] because we
had to wait and know a little more about the virus and the mechanism though
which it infects cells,” Verez said. “We are seeing a safety profile with the
vaccine [Soberana 2] that is very good.”
With its
economy ravaged by the pandemic, decades of sanctions and a decline in aid from
its ally Venezuela, the island has been grappling with shortages in food and medicine.
Its economy shrank 11 percent in 2020. But it has managed to keep the number of
Covid-19 infections and deaths down with strict measures and lockdowns,
compared to many developed countries around the world. In recent weeks, the
country has averaged around 1,000 cases per day, but it had very low infection
rates last year.
The final
results of the Phase 3 trials are not expected for months. The government’s
plan is to have nearly all the inhabitants of the capital, Havana, vaccinated
by May through the interventional study, and the entire country’s population
inoculated before the year ends.
Verez
said that while the vaccination won’t be mandatory, he thinks “the immense
majority of the population wants the vaccine.”
For Cuba,
the vaccine is as much about public health as it is a show of force; that a
small communist country sanctioned by the U.S. can compete on the world stage
with its own vaccine candidates. Cuba
could have acquired vaccines from its allies, China and Russia, but developing
its own gives it the opportunity to sell vaccines to underdeveloped countries
that have seen few doses, giving it a source of badly-needed hard currency. As
U.S. and British vaccines advanced in clinical trials last year, wealthy countries in North America and Europe preordered
large quantities, leaving poor and developing countries with a large gap in
access.
Verez
said some countries have approached Cuban officials with the intent to purchase
more than 100 million annual doses of some of its vaccines. He said Cuba’s
vaccine production system is being reorganized to produce 100 million doses. Iran, which banned U.S. and British vaccines,
will host a Phase 3 trial of Soberana 2 as part of an agreement
that includes producing millions of doses there. Venezuela will produce Abdala
vaccines, its government announced Thursday. Mexico and Argentina have also expressed interest
in Cuba’s vaccines.
“They are
very safe,” Dr. Eduardo Martínez Díaz, president of the state-run BioCubaFarma,
said in emailed responses to questions. “After applying thousands of doses,
only slight and moderate side effects were seen in a small percentage of
volunteers.”
Díaz
added that both vaccines are creating a high amount of immunity. If exported,
the prices would be affordable, he said.
Verez said the vaccines will be adapted to the new variants, and extra doses could be required to boost immunity.
