San jOse. – The 1 of January of 2021 was differentiated from the previous similar dates in 61 years from 1959 to Cuba.
Although the tireless propaganda of the communist regime repeat a range of self-praise to celebrate that yesterday marked the 62nd anniversary of the triumph of the revolution, the first day of 2021 implemented a pro-government economic package that buried the old state subsidies in multiple sectors and generated new survival anxieties for the 11.3 million inhabitants of the greater Antilles.
Closed for the most serious economic crisis in the 21st century and one of the sharpest since 1959, the Communist Party of Cuba (CCP) began to implement a severe adjustment program unprecedented on the island from its full power of armored state capitalism in a socialist economy.
With forecasts that inflation and devaluation will skyrocket, Cubans are facing, precisely from the day of the anniversary, an increase in the price of the food basket and the tariffs for gas, water, electricity and telephone services, with a monetary unification around the dollar and a wage increase.
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“It is to impose the neoliberalism pure in a system of monopolistic capitalism state. The worst consequences will be for the most vulnerable: the vast majority, “said dissident Dagoberto Valdés, a religious, agronomist, social scientist and director of Coexistence, a Cuban digital magazine.
“The same applies to Cuba as this government criticized in Latin American and Caribbean countries that this kind of adjustment widens the gap, the abyss, among the very few who enjoy the piñata of the state monopoly and the vast majority of the town, which will become poorer, “Valdés, a former member of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace of the Vatican, told eL UNIVERSAL. “It’s a belt adjustment to an already impoverished economy,” he alleged.
From the opposite side, the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Economy of Cuba, Alejandro Fernández, He assured that “the strategy is not to dollarize the economy.”
The constant opening of state shops in dollars in a country with salaries in Cuban currency is due to the resurgence of the economic “blockade” that Washington imposed on Havana in 1962, the shortage of the retail market, the lack of fuel and the collateral impact of the coronavirus, he stressed.
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The government assured that it will prevent speculation with essential items and the dollar.
In a message for the 62nd anniversary, the President of Cuba, Miguel Díaz-Canel, proclaimed that “together we will win” in 2021. The Cuban Prime Minister, Manuel Marrero, Highlighted the popular “resistance” to the harassment of the United States and tweeted: “Yes it could, if it can and always can.”
The accumulated damage from U.S. sanctions over the age of 58 amounted to $ 144,000 to $ 413 million, the Cuban chancellery said.
Cuba sailed until the last night of 2020 in one monetary duality and exchange rate that created in 1994, with pesos in two denominations – Cuban and convertible – and different quotation against the dollar. The convertible was buried and by 2021 only the Cuban remained, amid a shortage of priority assets that deepened since 2018.
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The regime pays its employees in pesos, but opened dollar stores with products that, in popular slang, are “lost” in local currency.
The CCP, the only political force in a country without multipartyism, Passed the minimum wage of 400 pesos (about $ 16) from 2019-2000 100 (about $ 87), but raised the cost of living.
For the opposition journalist Yoani Sanchez, Director of the digital newspaper 14ymedio.com that operates illegally in Cuba, the increase in prices and tariffs and the end of subsidies would serve to baptize 2021: “The year to say goodbye to the revolutionary mask.”