The Cuban president seems to go all out, head-on, against Donald Trump

On Monday, amid another total blackout of the national electrical system, the Cuban government announced a measure that had been demanded for years as part of the reforms the country must undertake to overcome its insurmountable crisis. It involves allowing Cubans living abroad to participate as partners or even owners of private companies here. According to what was specified by the now so-called Cuban economy's czar, the Deputy Prime Minister and head of the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Foreign Investment, Óscar Pérez-Oliva Fraga, this potential link will not be limited solely to small businesses. Still, it could scale up to projects related to infrastructure and other larger-scale economic initiatives, which until now have generally been vetoed for the private sector, let alone for foreign actors.

And there is more. Mirroring new possibilities for strategic association between private and state companies within the national sphere, those residents abroad will also be able to connect with both actors. Furthermore, among other opportunities, they will be able to receive land in usufruct for agricultural production projects and provide financial services, including the management of virtual assets, which may include cryptocurrencies. As I expressed before, any measure adopted by Cuba at this moment will have the suspicion hanging over it of whether it is organic or obeys the context of extraordinary pressure and economic asphyxiation imposed by Washington. And, in the same sense, whether it is taken in a secret bilateral consensus.

By how Rubio reacted this Tuesday, everything indicates, for the moment, that in the case we are presenting, it is the first option, although the second is not ruled out. "What they announced yesterday is not dramatic enough. It's not going to fix it, so they've got some big decisions to make over there," he said. It sounds like saying the classic expression "it is a limited step, although in the right direction," but he did not go that far. Rubio also told reporters that "[Cuba] doesn´t get subsidies anymore, so they are in a lot of trouble, and the [authorities] there don´t know how to fix it, so they have to get new people in charge," somehow confirming reports appearing in the Miami Herald and the New York Times claiming that the United States has suggested to Havana's negotiators that Díaz-Canel, the Cuban president, cannot continue in power.

Any change in this sense, or, in general, in anything that touches the organization of the State, will imply a flagrant political concession, eroding a fairly clean trajectory of Cuba in enforcing the principle of self-determination. Economic changes, again, could amount to the same, but they can be explained as part of the bumpy reform processes that the country has undergone for the last 20 years.

Díaz-Canel and Bruno counterattack assertively

However, the Cuban president and then his chancellor, Bruno Rodríguez, came out on Tuesday night to react, with very harsh messages, to the psychological warfare implemented by the White House. "Faced with the worst scenario, [Cuba] is escorted by a certainty: any external aggressor will crash into an impregnable resistance," stated Díaz-Canel, who also serves as First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba. "[The United States] threatens [Cuba] with destroying the constitutional order and taking control of the country. The collective punishment applied to us Cubans will not dent the full exercise of sovereignty nor the creativity in the face of the blockade and the energy siege," expressed the Minister of Foreign Relations for his part. If on Pennsylvania Avenue, they were not expecting this type of public posture, it may mark the fate of this very delicate moment in the historical confrontation. And there is also the discussion about how cohesive Cuban political power is. Is it as monolithic as it has always appeared to be, or are there factions? Is the Cuban president actively fighting for his (political) survival?

Source for the photo in the cover.