Although it may be explained in other ways, the abrupt and highly representative change in the way politics is being conducted in Cuba, especially in economic matters, is a response to the severity of the crisis the country is experiencing as a result of the massive impact of the economic warfare pursued by the Trump administration. With a State that is completely deprived of resources and isolated from the rest of the world because of—first and foremost—that policy, the Cuban authorities have had little choice but to hastily implement a series of reforms that had been promoted and debated for years, including changes of a magnitude that even the most optimistic might never have imagined.
Cuba's economic system is rigid, and much of it made little sense even from the perspective of a socialist political process. This severely limited the country's and its people's ability to grow. Today, I want to focus on two particular fronts I believe, taken together, constitute a genuine turning point. The first concerns how the State monopolized the workforce made available to foreign investors, and the second concerns how talent can now flourish through private initiatives.
Decree-Law 128, amending the Foreign Investment Law, has officially established the decision to allow Cuban workers or foreign permanent residents in Cuba providing services to foreign-invested businesses to be hired directly by joint ventures and wholly foreign-owned companies. Thus, state-owned employment agencies are no longer mandatory for this purpose.
This limited foreign investment's ability to compensate Cuban personnel efficiently, and in a way that reflected their actual capacity. It acted both as a disincentive and as a channel for corruption—because those who could access this circuit were not always the most capable people, but rather those who happened to have the "right" connections to position themselves within it no matter their knowledge.
The other key change is the major reduction in bureaucracy involved in creating businesses, including greater flexibility in the activities that can be carried out in the private sector. It is a controlled form of flexibility, but it is real. For example, until now architects were explicitly prohibited from establishing private companies, as were business management consulting firms.
The door is still not fully open to everything these activities could offer, since they remain subject to certain requirements, but at least they can now be pursued and potentially put into practice. Programming is now explicitly allowed. This should help scientific capital find new avenues through which to stand out and monetize its technical and intellectual value, both for itself and for society.
In my own case, for example, I have been waiting for years for consulting activities to be liberalized. This is one area of the economy where the social sciences can be of considerable practical use. With my wife, I also have some projects in mind related to programming activities. So, amid the greatest economic storm we have experienced in a long time, let us hope that these changes will allow the country to improve as much as possible through nothing more—and nothing less—than the efforts of its highly skilled population.
Source for the cover image, generated with GPT technology.
