cuba tourism problems

Cuba Tourism Faces Shortages of Visitors and Supplies

Dave Sherwood, Marc Frank and Nelson Acosta, Reuters

February 18th, 2023 at 7:58 AM EST

Tourism officials in Cuba have to fight the perception that a visit isn't worth the hassle because of ongoing blackouts and shortages.

Dennis Schaal

British birdwatcher Harriet Babeo arrived at Cuba’s Bay of Pigs earlier this week and promptly racked up 80 species for her list including the world’s smallest hummingbird and the elusive red, white and blue Cuban trogon, rarities found only the island.

Far more challenging, she told Reuters, was hunting down a few liters of gasoline for her group’s rental car.

“We’ve gone … three days now, and (the service stations) have had nothing,” Babeo said over breakfast, binoculars and bird book near at hand, at a private home-stay on Cuba’s serene Bay of Pigs.

Tourists like Babeo who spoke with Reuters often raved about their experience in Cuba, praising the country’s hospitality, culture and weather. But increasingly, says Paolo Spadoni, an economist with Augusta University, visitors must confront the realities of Cuba’s economic crisis – the worst in decades – an ominous headwind as the country struggles to breathe new life into its all-important tourism sector.

“If you see how slow the recovery of the Cuban tourism sector is compared to other countries, it tells you there are deeper problems,” Spadoni said.

Cuba in 2022 received 1.6 million visitors, just 38% of the 4.3 million who traveled to the island in 2019, prior to the pandemic. Neighboring Dominican Republic, meanwhile, saw 7.2 million visitors in 2022, up 11.1% over 2019.

Policies implemented by U.S. President Donald Trump have scared off many tourists, Spadoni said. Trump ended cruise ship dockings and flights from the United States and put travelers of other nationalities who visited the island at risk of complicating entry to the United States.

But Cuba’s centrally planned economy, he said, has also failed to ensure adequate infrastructure and supply chains to serve those who still venture forth, souring some visitors and making it “very unlikely” Cuba will hit its goal of 3.5 million visitors in 2023.

“It’s a combination of things that create more and more problems just traveling to Cuba and in the end, many just decide to go somewhere else,” Spadoni said.

The Cuban government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Cuba reported 246,000 visitors in January, a slower start to the year than likely necessary to hit its targets, but far better than the first month of 2022, when only 86,400 tourists arrived.

Part of the Experience

Large, state-owned hotels in Havana and on sandy keys offshore account for much of Cuba’s tourism revenue, official statistics show.

But at Playa Larga, a palm-fringed white sand beach deep inside the Bay of Pigs, small private homeowners still fight for their share of tourists, offering home-cooked meals, cozy rooms and Cuban hospitality.

Amauri Lugo, who runs a small home-stay near the beach, said even breakfast basics – milk, bread, eggs, cheese, ham – were hard to come by this year. And while electrical service has improved since December, he said, blackouts were so common last year that tourists often ate dinner by candlelight.

“It made it difficult to attend (to) visitors, but a lot of them understood and cooperated, even enjoyed those moments,” he said.

Collin Laverty, founder of Cuba Educational Travel (CET), said such flexibility is a hallmark of travel to Cuba.

“I always tell travelers there’s definitely a challenging situation on the ground, shortages, inflation, and you’ll experience those things, and you should, because that’s part of going to a country and learning about the reality,” he said.

And for those not interested in roughing it, there are other options, he told Reuters.

“There’s certainly nice hotels with strong internet, bathrooms with toilet paper, and nice restaurants,” Laverty said. “You can see the challenges but you don’t necessarily have to live them first hand as travelers.”

(Reporting by Dave Sherwood in Playa Larga; Additional reporting by Marc Frank and Nelson Acosta in Havana; Editing by Daniel Wallis)

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This article was written by Dave Sherwood from Reuters and was legally licensed through the Industry Dive Content Marketplace . Please direct all licensing questions to [email protected] .

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Photo credit: A stop on a TravelLocal arranged tour of Cuba. The country's tourism rebound has been sluggish compared with its neighbors. TravelLocal

Less electricity, less milk and less meat: Cuba’s energy and food crisis worsens

The island will suffer blackouts in october and transportation may collapse due to lack of fuel. the government recognizes the seriousness of the situation, but blames it on the economic blockade.

The crisis that has been hitting Cubans for years has entered a new stage, with the government officially recognizing the seriousness of the situation. This week, two state officials — Economy Minister Alejandro Gil Fernández and Mining and Energy Minister Vicente de la O Levy — appeared on the state TV show Round Table , which has been used to announce each of the calamities that Cuba has faced in the past 20 years. With a martial tone, the leaders explained that the country does not have enough money to buy food abroad and that the crisis, including the energy shortages, may worsen in the coming weeks. In other words, they confirmed that there will be less of the little that the island’s inhabitants had left: less milk, less coffee, less pork, less public transportation and fewer hours of electricity.

The “economy is in a complex situation,” said Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Economy Alejandro Gil Fernández, who during the program broadcast on Wednesday did not offer figures but recognized the shortages of milk and bread, and the delays with the monthly food rations given to Cuban households.

Energy and Mining Minister O Levy announced for his part that there will be blackouts during October due to a shortage of up to 700 megawatts, which is equivalent to 20% of national consumption. He also said that public transportation will also be hit hard due to the fuel shortages . Of the 120,000 to 130,000 tons of diesel that the country needs each month, 1,000 tons will be used for electricity production, he said. “We have suppliers and countries that have not been able to comply and that have breached contracts. We have had to go out to buy fuel nearly on a day-by-day basis,” he said. “We are in a tight situation, but it is going to get better.”

After recognizing the deep stagnation of the Cuban economy and blaming it on the U.S. embargo and the rising cost of food in the international market, the ministers admitted that the country needs to focus on national production: “To depend more and more on what we are capable of producing,” stated Gil Fernández, who also asked the Cuban people to keep their confidence in the revolution. “We know that life is hard,” he insisted. “But trust, that the only way out is revolution and socialism.”

But many Cubans were not swayed by the ministers’ speech, and expressed their reservations on social media. “It’s more of the same,” Dani González told EL PAÍS from Havana. “What I do know is that no leader is going through what we, the people, are going through. I feel disappointed in everything they have promised us and have not fulfilled.”

Contingency measures adopted in some provinces of the country had already been made public before Wednesday’s television broadcast, including the reduction of electricity hours in Cuban homes, the adjustment of working hours, the shift to remote work, reduction in lighting and the restructuring of school schedules.

“I don’t think this is an exceptional situation,” Cuban economist Mauricio de Miranda told EL PAÍS. “We have been at almost zero options for a long time. The Cuban economy has a structural crisis that has been going on for more than three decades, the Cuban economy has not emerged from the crisis.”

In recent years, the Cuban government tried unsuccessfully to rescue the Cuban economy with a series of measures, including the so-called Ordering Task. This policy involved eliminating the dual currency; opening stores in foreign currency, opening some mixed capital companies to foreign investors, establishing small and medium-sized businesses and the banking of financial operations. However, the people have been suffering wide-ranging shortages that some have compared to the hardships of the so-called Special Period, following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. In the last two years of crisis, more than 300,000 Cubans have left the country , the largest exodus since the Cuban Revolution.

The shortages affecting Cuba worsened with the Covid-19 crisis and the drastic fall of the country’s most important economic sector: tourism. At the end of July, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel said that Cuba will not reach its goal of registering 3.5 million international tourists this year. However, the country remains committed to allocating its few resources to this sector, something that specialists consider a mistake.

“Allocating the majority of resources to tourism has been a serious mistake, because due to the scarcity of the Cuban economy’s financial resources [and] its very limited investment capacity, essential sectors have been neglected, such as agriculture and the industrial sector,” said De Miranda.

Cubans have been facing a very critical situation, and in recent years, this has led to growing social discontent. Foods that were once common on the table, such as pork, are now scarce. Complaints are pouring in about the lack of fuel, even for hearses. High product prices are incompatible with low wages. The Cuban Observatory of Human Rights (OACDH) showed last September in its VI Report on the State of Social Rights in Cuba that extreme poverty in the country increased drastically in one year. According to them, 88% of Cubans live on less than $1.9 a day and 48% have cut back on meals because they don’t have enough money to buy food.

“We need a national debate on the future of the country,” said De Miranda. According to the economist, a short-term solution could be promoting private sector production.

“We must allow everyone who has the resources to start a business to do so. And that way production grows,” he said. “But the fundamental problem is that the government does not want to abandon the model in which it is the government that takes care of the entire economy, that authorizes, that allows, that makes decisions. That is absurd, and it has been proven that this kind of centralized model has failed.”

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The Impact of COVID-19 on Tourism in Cuba

Por Olivia Marin Alvarez (El Toque)

HAVANA TIMES – Tourism has been one of the sectors hardest hit by the pandemic. In 2020, the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) estimated that the effects of COVID-19 on global tourism would be greater than those sparked by the 2008 financial crisis: between 100-120 million jobs at stake; billion-dollar losses in tourism exports; and a 1.5% – 2.8% drop of the global Gross Domestic Product (GDP), according to a United Nations (UN) report.

By the end of December 2020, Cuba had experienced a 74.6% drop in international visitors compared to those that came in 2019. By February 2021, there had been a 95.5% drop compared to numbers in January and February the previous year.

This drop is not only the result of Cuba closing its borders, but also the result of restrictions imposed on movement by other countries, in order to keep infections under control.

According to ECLAC, Cuba has a diverse range and surplus of tourist services, which are an important source of foreign currency and jobs: approximately 273,000 workers (6% of the active working population) work in hotels and restaurants; revenues linked to international tourism grew by approximately 2.968 billion Convertible pesos (in theory = USD) in 2018; and the sector contributed 10.3% to the national GDP, in 2019.

It is precisely because of tourism’s contribution to the national GDP that its decline could bring about a 2% drop in this indicator, as well as a 10% – 20% drop in the island’s total exports of goods and services, a report published by ECLAC explains. In fact, revenue from international tourism represents 22% of Cuba’s total exports, the UN reveals.

Meanwhile, most revenue from the tourism sector comes from foreign visitors, accounting for just over 70% of the total, according to ECLAC.

What has Cuba done to reactivate tourism?

With the mission to limit the pandemic’s negative effects on the sector, Cuba reopened its borders to foreign visitors in July 2020, and in the beginning, they were only able to stay in tourist facilities in the cays located on the northern coast, without being able to travel to other locations in the country.

Later, tourists were welcomed back into the rest of the country; but with different safety protocols in place, to curtail the number of infections. Thus, the Cuban Ministry of Tourism established that travelers could only enter national territory if they presented a negative PCR test result, carried out in the last 72 hours before arriving on the island, as well as doing another test at the airport upon arrival.

Meanwhile, visitors must have a health insurance policy that covers COVID-19, or they have to purchase it when they arrive in Cuba. It costs 30 USD or its equivalent in another currency. Masks are also compulsory in tourist facilities where visitors stay until they receive test results from the PCR test they must take at the airport.

On the other hand, an assessment process of other tourist facilities that aren’t hotels has already begun, so as to award them with a Tourism + Hygiene and Safety Certificate, created by the Ministry of Tourism and Ministry of Public Health.

This certificate is awarded after it is determined that hygiene/sanitary and safety protocols are being respected, with physical distancing measures; that disinfectant is available for hands and surfaces are being disinfected; that daily health and temperature checks of employees and tourists are being done; as well as access to doctors, nurses and hygiene and epidemiology technicians, etc. 24/7.

[Currently most commercial flights to Cuba are suspended as the surge of Covid-19 positive cases takes place nationwide averaging around 1,000 a day.  The main exception being for Russian tourists who go straight to the northern cays and remain there.]

Read more from Cuba here on Havana Times.

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The World Through a Lens

An Inside Look at Cuba’s Constant Struggle for Clean Water

Across the country, battling water scarcity requires a vast array of workers, from inspectors and fumigators to truck drivers and pipe layers.

Bottled water is distributed among the shops in Central Havana. Credit...

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Photographs and Text by Sanne Derks

• Feb. 15, 2021

In one hand Manuel Reyes Estrada carried a form and a pencil, in the other a bucket filled with small fish and a plastic Bucanero beer cup. “It is like this,” he said. “We, the health brigade employees, are only allowed to write with pencils.” His superiors, he explained, use pens. In the afternoon, the superiors visit the houses where the health brigade employees have worked earlier in the day — “to check if we have done our work well.”

Manuel stopped for a second on the unpaved road in the Cuban city of Holguín to fill in the house numbers on his otherwise empty form. He swept the sweat away from his face.

Every day in towns across Cuba, a vast array of workers — from inspectors and fumigators to truck drivers and pipe layers — takes to the streets in a coordinated effort to provide clean water to their fellow citizens.

Among other responsibilities, the health workers conduct exhaustive inspections of rooftop water tanks, ensuring that the water is clean and free of mosquito larvae, thereby helping to prevent the transmission of tropical diseases such as dengue, chikungunya and Zika.

The efforts are part of an analog, labor-intensive solution in a largely nondigital society .

A significant portion of Cuba’s available drinking water is lost through its leaky and antiquated pipelines — more than 50 percent, by some estimates .

In recent years, infrastructure problems have been compounded by droughts and rising temperatures. For much of the population, running water is available only sporadically — in some cases, for one or two hours a day, every few days. While it flows, residents store the available water in cisterns or tanks, which then serve as potential breeding environments for mosquitoes.

Manuel ignored the barking dog as he entered the house. A woman wearing curlers in her hair showed him the spiral staircase that leads to the roof. After locating the building’s water tank, he used a small mirror to illuminate its shadowy interior.

Using the plastic beer cup, Manuel scooped five little fish from his bucket into the water tank. “Normally we use Abate,” he said, referring to a larvicide, also known as temefos , used to treat water. But the chemical wasn’t available, he explained, and so the fish, which eat the larvae, are employed as a natural — if complicated — alternative.

With a background in anthropology, I have long been interested in how people live and manage their everyday challenges.

During previous visits to Cuba, I noticed the daily struggles for fresh water: people hassling with water pumps, the streets soaked because of faulty pipelines, water trucks continuously plying the roads. Born and raised in the rainy Netherlands, where clean drinking water is taken for granted, I hadn’t expected water to be a scarcity on a tropical island.

In February 2019, Cubans voted to approve a new constitution , which, among many other provisions, established the right to clean water. I decided to make this constitutional right a starting point for a project on Cuba’s underreported water crisis.

I traveled to Cuba for six weeks in April and May 2019, and for four more weeks in January 2020. On the first trip I learned how different areas experience different problems — and find solutions. I also discovered how many professions were involved in providing water to residents.

By shadowing different workers who were involved in guaranteeing water access on various parts of the island, I began to see a cross-section of contemporary Cuba.

In the town of Trinidad, for example, I met Alexis Alonso Mendoza, who described himself as “the most popular man in town.”

Trinidad is divided into several districts, each of which usually has running water for two hours every five days. As the “water-key man,” Alexis is responsible for turning the underground sluices that change the direction of the water within the town.

Using an off-line map , I located the small clinics, called policlínicas, where, at 8 a.m., the inspectors and fumigators of the health brigade gather before dispersing into the streets.

I climbed aboard several water trucks, called pipas, which supply water in the event of a broken pipeline or insufficient pressure — or when functioning plumbing simply doesn’t exist.

Many of the drivers were kind enough to let me observe how they fill their trucks and distribute the water. I witnessed firsthand the bureaucracy involved — and the seemingly endless amounts of time the drivers spent waiting to fill their tanks.

I also hopped on the horse-drawn carriages that carry the water throughout the city, and observed how Cubans — with an ingeniousness and thoroughness — tried to fix their water hoses and pumps with whatever materials were available to them.

It’s difficult to know the full effects of the pandemic on Cuba’s water crisis. For much of 2020, the country largely controlled the virus, but a dearth of tourists led to one of the worst food shortages in nearly 25 years . Infections increased dramatically after lockdowns were lifted and the country’s borders were opened in November. Since then, additional stresses to the public health system may have exacerbated inspection, fumigation and delivery.

While walking back to the policlínica at the end of one of his shifts, Manuel, who has worked for the health brigade for 13 years, reflected on his work. He was pleased, he said, to be “contributing to the health of my compatriots.” But he also enjoys the interactions — visiting people, having a chat. “Often they invite me for coffee,” he said.

A man on a bicycle greeted him as he rode past. “Manuel, can you bring me some fish tomorrow? I will get you some cigars in return.”

Later, Manuel passed his supervisor. “You know the green house at the corner, where the older lady lives alone?” he said. “I found mosquito larvae in the lower tank on the patio.”

“OK,” his supervisor responded. “I’ll send the fumigators to smoke them out. See you tomorrow, mi vida.”

Sanne Derks is a Dutch freelance photojournalist and anthropologist. You can follow her work on Instagram .

Her project on Cuba’s struggles with water accessibility was funded in part by the Dutch Fund for In-depth Journalism and the Anna Cornelis Fund for Documentary Photographers .

Follow New York Times Travel on Instagram , Twitter and Facebook . And sign up for our weekly Travel Dispatch newsletter to receive expert tips on traveling smarter and inspiration for your next vacation.

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As holidaying Canadians return to Cuba, Cubans themselves are fleeing in record numbers

Canadians accounted for more than half of all tourists entering cuba at the start of 2023.

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Canadian tourists returned to Cuba in large numbers this winter after their numbers fell to almost nothing during the pandemic. Preliminary figures suggest that Canadians accounted for about 52 per cent of all foreign arrivals in Cuba in January.

Cubans themselves, meanwhile, are fleeing the island nation in record numbers in response to unprecedented levels of poverty and political repression.

More than 220,000 Cubans — amounting to 2 per cent of the island's entire population — were taken into custody after crossing the U.S.-Mexico border last year. Others settled in other countries in the Americas or traveled as far as Russia and Serbia (both countries that allow Cubans to enter visa-free).

Within the Cuban diaspora, there is a sense that the country is emptying out — that almost anyone who has the means to leave is either actively planning an escape or is at least thinking about it.

An industry has grown up around the exodus, with airlines cashing in on Cubans' desperation by charging exorbitant fares to destinations where Cubans are allowed to land.

And there are indications that the Cuban Communist Party and its ally in Nicaragua, the Ortega-Murillo regime, are allowing and even encouraging the exodus in order to kill two birds with one stone by generating income while removing dissidents.

'Everyone is leaving'

"This would be the largest single figure of people leaving the island ever registered, either before or after the revolution," said Jorge Duany, an expert on Cuban migration at Florida International University.

"It's more than (the Mariel boatlift) in 1980, the prior record, or the more recent upsurge in Cuban migration during the rafter crisis in 1994."

Duany said the exodus is being driven by a combination of factors, including political repression, a failing economy and "health issues, especially during the pandemic in the last few years."

"And all of these factors combined to create a perfect storm," he said. "So people are just desperate to leave, whether it's for immediate reasons like not having enough food on their table, or for having participated in one of the peaceful demonstrations, not just on July 11 (2021), but also smaller ones in the last year and a half, as well as the very extreme response by the Cuban government of repressing these protests and putting people in jail."

With its own economy a shambles, Cuba depends heavily on remittances sent by Cubans living in the U.S. The Trump administration imposed limits on how much could be sent and how, leading Western Union to close its operations in Cuba.

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Last May, the Biden administration relaxed those rules  and this month, Western Union resumed normal remittance operations. But Duany said the combination of the pandemic — which brought tourism almost to a standstill — and the difficulties around remittances pushed many Cubans to the point of desperation.

Duany said the exodus cuts across all segments of Cuban society.

"I think everyone is leaving," he said. "We don't have a good profile of the last wave of ... 2022, the 225,000 people yet, but previous data that we do have from Homeland Security suggests that it's a cross-section mostly of Cubans from all walks of life. They tend to be younger, of course."

'Families are selling everything they have'

Kirenia Carbonell is a Canadian federal public servant originally from the small town of La Canela in Cuba's eastern Holguin province.

"Where I come from," she told CBC News, "entire families are selling everything they have and they're leaving via Nicaragua. Some of them are even going to Suriname . I never heard of Suriname before. Some of them from my own family are living in Suriname. They find themselves a job and they're able to afford to sponsor the rest of the family from Cuba to Suriname."

Carbonell said inflation has widened the gap between Cuban wages and the cost of the most basic necessities to a point where many can no longer cope.

"We have that ration card that every month you are supposed to get from your local grocery this and that, five pounds of rice," she said. "This month in my municipality, they brought one pound of rice per person for the entire month. But then the same government has special stores where you can go and buy one pound for 150 pesos. They get paid 2,500 pesos on average and just the food for the month is over 30,000 pesos."

A new escape route opens

The stereotype of a Cuban migrant is the "balsero" or rafter who floats across the straits that divide Cuba from Florida.

That kind of migration is still happening. The U.S. Coast Guard detained about 2,500 balseros during January alone.

But these days, only the poorest and most desperate Cubans take the dangerous sea route.

New air and land routes have opened up that are preferred by migrants — and are also more lucrative for the Cuban government and its Nicaraguan ally.

Cuba has one of the world's weakest passports in terms of visa-free travel because of the well-known penchant of Cubans to defect once they leave the island. But in November 2021, Nicaragua lifted the visa requirement for Cuban citizens, ostensibly to promote tourism.

"They are lovers of our volcanoes. They don't have volcanoes," Ana Carolina Garcia of Nicaragua's tourism bureau said at the time.

In fact, the vast majority of Cubans who travel to Nicaragua subsequently head north and try to cross the U.S.-Mexico land border.

No sooner was the visa requirement lifted than a group of little-known charter airlines began to offer exorbitantly-priced flights from Havana or Camaguey, Cuba to Managua, Nicaragua. Carriers such as Air Century, Aruba Airlines and the Venezuelan state-owned Conviasa have charged up to $6,000 for seats on the two-hour flight.

Normally, Cubans can only pay those fares by borrowing money from relatives who have already left the island.

Regimes cashing in on migrants

The air migration represents a bonanza for both the Nicaraguan and Cuban regimes, which profit mightily from taxes, airport fees, landing fees and other charges.

If the migrants are successful in reaching the U.S., Cuba can expect them to send money to family members back home — at which point the regime profits a second time by taxing the remittances. (For Nicaragua too, remittances have become essential )

Cuban Communist authorities take a third cut when family members in Cuba have to spend those dollars in the Cuban government's monopolistic dollarized stores, which sell goods with an average mark-up of over 200 per cent.

(CBC News contacted the Cuban embassy for this article but did not receive a response.)

Moreover, dissidents say the Cuban and Nicaraguan regimes both see migration as achieving a double political purpose: expelling their own dissidents and frustrated citizens while undermining the United States with waves of illegal immigration.

"This is their modus operandi, every time the tensions in Cuba rise," said Carbonell, who linked the wave of protests that swept Cuba in the summer of 2021 directly to the decision to open the Nicaraguan escape valve in the fall of that year.

"It relieves the pressure by opening its borders, as in the Mariel situation (in 1980)," she said. "And in this case, they found an accomplice in Nicaragua who then was able to receive Cubans without the visa.

"Everyone knows where those Cubans are going to end up, whether it's in the United States or on a road into Quebec. They know they're not going to stay in Nicaragua."

Exporting people

"There seems to be some sort of agreement between the Nicaraguan government and the Cuban government in order to facilitate this migration," said Duany. "Although again, it's not in any document I've seen.

"But clearly the Cuban government benefits from exporting a large number of people, especially dissidents, but also those who can't find work in Cuba. And that seems to be a problem as well in the last few years, of an increasing unofficial unemployment. If you look at the numbers, Cuba has one of the lowest unemployment rates in the world, but many of those people aren't working productively and they're making very low salaries."

Remittances, he said, "have become probably the second or third major source of currency after tourism and the export of professional services (such as Cuban doctors ).

"It's one of the ways in which the Cuban government can find a lifeline through this flow of money that eventually gets back to Cuba."

The other way the Cuban regime hopes to dig itself out of its current economic crisis is by doubling down on tourism.

"There's a lot of effort to re-establish Russian tourism," said Duany, adding the war in Ukraine likely will make it difficult to restore the Russian tourist traffic Cuba enjoyed before the pandemic.

Cuba depends more than ever on Canadians

Before the pandemic, the biggest source of tourist money for the Cuban regime was Canadians.

About 1.3 million Canadians would enter and leave Cuba in a typical year — more than any other nationality, including Cubans themselves.

The Cuban government and the Cuban military that owns many of the resorts have focused spending in recent years on building new hotels . 

But although Canadians are now returning — Swoop, a low-cost airline, announced  three new weekly flights to Varadero in January — tourism numbers have not rebounded as quickly as the Communist Party had hoped . January 2023 saw only about 63 per cent of the bookings reported in January 2020, although for Canadian tourists the number was closer to 80 per cent.

Cuba has had to halve its GDP growth forecast for 2023 from 6 per cent to 3 per cent as it struggles to recover from the 11 per cent plunge it suffered in 2020.

Cuban pro-democracy activists continue to appeal to Canadians not to travel to Cuba.

"I believe there is a lack of awareness that these things are going on in Cuba," said Carbonell. "I have many friends who are even now going to go because in their minds, when they go, they help the Cuban population.

"And it's true, they bring a luggage full of medicine, full of essentials, nylons for the ladies working at the resort and so forth, because they know there is nothing. But maybe they don't realize that you can contribute all you want to your friends in Cuba, but you nevertheless are contributing to the regime."

Carbonell said the money the Cuban regime and armed forces obtain from tourism is mostly re-invested in building new hotels, while the Cuban workforce is paid only a fraction of what hotel workers are paid in neighbouring countries. The money also finances the Cuban Communist Party's apparatus of repression.

"No one who goes to the resort can imagine that beyond those walls, people are suffering so badly," she said.

Although the new routes out of Cuba may seem safer than venturing onto the sea in rickety rafts, hundreds of Cubans have lost their lives or disappeared in the recent wave of departures. Some died of accidents or homicides on the overland route, or drowned trying to cross the Rio Grande.

"People have lost their lives in the rivers, people have lost their lives on the sea," said Carbonell.

"So how desperate they could be? And the government took advantage of that, just took advantage of everyone who had someone abroad who could send them the money to do that, of everyone who sold every little thing they had to be able to collect the money and do the route."

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Senior Reporter

Evan Dyer has been a journalist with CBC for 25 years, after an early career as a freelancer in Argentina. He works in the Parliamentary Bureau and can be reached at [email protected].

20 things to know before visiting Cuba

Jan 5, 2024 • 8 min read

Be ready for your visit to Cuba with these top tips on what to expect © Westend61 / Getty Images

To a first-time traveler, Cuba can seem like a confusing jigsaw puzzle, particularly if you’re breaking free of the resorts and traveling around on your own.

The Spanish spoken here is fast and hard to decipher, many streets have two different names and the country’s fickle and highly complicated monetary situation could fill its own guidebook. 

To help you be prepared, here is everything you need to know before planning a trip to Cuba.

1. Double-check your insurance

You are required to have medical insurance to visit Cuba and will need to bring digital or printed proof of your policy. Random checks are made at the airport. If you arrive without insurance, you’ll be asked to buy a Cuban policy at the airport for US$30.

2. Fill out your passenger information in advance

Cuba uses an online form called  D’Viajeros  to gather traveler information, including immigration and health data, in advance of travel. Fill out the form digitally up to 72 hours before your arrival in Cuba.

3. Every visitor needs a tourist card

To enter Cuba, all visitors need to present a completed tourist card . It’s usually available through your airline (ask when booking) and included in the price of your ticket.

If not, you can purchase one through a Cuban travel agency. Costs range from US$50 to US$85. Citizens of 20 African and Asian countries require a formal visa to enter Cuba. Check the situation for your country before booking.

4. Cash and currency: it’s complicated!

Money in Cuba is confusing, even to Cubans . Since the country abolished convertibles (CUC) in January 2021 and took the US dollar out of circulation in June 2021, there has been massive inflation and the emergence of a rampant black market. The knock-on effect is a bewildering dual economy.

The official currency of Cuba is the Cuban peso (CUP), but foreign currencies are also widely accepted, especially by private businesses who need hard cash to buy non-rationed goods in MLC (freely convertible currency) shops.

State-run enterprises and banks use official exchange rates. However, the prices of the superior services offered by private businesses generally reflect black market exchange rates.

Hence a main dish in a private restaurant in Havana will cost around CUP$500 (US$21). That’s an expensive meal if you’re paying in pesos bought from a Cuban bank.

However, most private restaurants will also accept payment in euros using a more favorable exchange rate. Some will even have a separate menu with prices printed in euros.    

When buying something from a private business – be it a restaurant, casa particular (private accommodation) or taxi service – it’s usually best to pay in a foreign currency. Always ask upfront what currencies they accept and what exchange rate they use for their published peso prices.

Euros is the most interchangeable currency and the one preferred by Cubans. You can also use and exchange Canadian dollars and pound sterling.

US dollars still circulate on the black market, but we don’t recommend bringing them. The best bet, when you arrive, is to keep most of your money in a foreign currency and only change small amounts into pesos for incidentals like museum entry, concert tickets and tips.

5. MLC is a currency with no cash form

The Moneda Libremente Convertible (MLC) is a currency approved by the Cuban government in 2020 that can be used in certain shops to buy higher-end goods.

The currency doesn’t exist as cash and its value is pegged with the US dollar. It’s used mainly by Cubans with special magnetic cards. 

Tourists needn’t worry too much about MLC$, although prices will sometimes be displayed in the currency in state-run enterprises such as cigar shops or airport souvenir stores where you can pay with a non-US credit card.

6. Only some credit cards will work

Credit cards are increasingly popular in Cuba and in many state-run businesses are the preferred (and sometimes only) method of payment.

Despite promises made in the Obama era, credit cards linked to US banks are not accepted. Private businesses almost never have credit card machines, meaning your only option is cash.

7. Pack your favorite casual clothes – and men need a shirt

Dress in Cuba is casual, so you can leave your high heels and tux behind. The only real dress code is in cinemas, theaters and nightclubs, where male patrons are required to wear long trousers and shirts with sleeves or half-sleeves.  

8. Cuban Spanish is fast and often informal

If you speak Spanish, you’ll find that Cubans mostly use the informal tú form of address, rather than usted . In the plural, ustedes is used over vosotros .

If you don’t know someone, it’s best to address them as señor or señora , though you’ll hear Cubans use all kinds of substitutes such as socio , hermano , papa , chica/o  and asere .

9. Cuban cities are where the streets have two names

In most Cuban cities, the streets have two names: a contemporary one that is noted on maps and marked on street signs, and a pre-revolutionary one that is still used widely by the locals.

This can become confusing, especially when locals, unaware of the new street names, start giving out directions or addresses using the colloquial nomenclature. Always double-check addresses and, if possible, get two potential names for the street you’re looking for.

10. Understand the local art of queueing

Cubans have to endure a lot of long waits in boring queues, so they’ve invented a way of doing it that doesn’t involve standing in line. In a Cuban queue, you simply roll up at the bakery/clinic/visa office and yell out to the assembled masses, "Quien es último?" (Who’s last?).

Hopefully, someone in a 400m vicinity will answer your polite entreaty with the word, "yo" (me). That person is your yardstick. As long as they’re still around, feel free to go for a walk, sit in the lotus position or buy ice cream. When they get called up, be on your toes, you’re next!

11. Ask questions more than once  

Thanks to heavy bureaucracy, answers to simple requests aren’t always straightforward – or even correct. Probe politely and ask at least five different people before you make important decisions.

12. Bring something to keep you warm on a cold bus journey

Cuba has a countrywide state-run bus service called  Víazul that connects all of the main cities and some of the smaller towns. Prices are charged in MLC$ (the same rate as the US$) and tickets must be paid for with a credit card either in person or online.

A second service called Conectando, run by Cubanacán, also puts on buses in peak season along some of the more popular routes. Bring a sweater/jacket for long bus rides – the air-conditioning is akin to a chilly day in Vancouver.

13. Cuba is considered a safe place to travel

Cuba is one of the safest countries in the Americas in terms of violent crime. Pick-pocketing is more common but not rampant, and is mostly avoidable if you follow a few basic precautions: Wear a money belt, use safe boxes in hotel rooms and don’t flash your cash in public.

14. Solo female travelers report receiving unwanted attention

Solo female travelers report experiencing a good deal of unwanted attention, but it didn't necessarily spoil their enjoyment of traveling in Cuba.

There is a fine line between being open and friendly and harassment, and some men can cross that line by being overly familiar or asking too many personal questions. Learn some key phrases in Spanish that make it clear when you're not interested.

15. Beware of forgeries

Never change money with unlicensed traders on the streets. You run the risk of receiving estafas (forged notes).

16. Bring your own medicines

On one level, Cuba has a good health system (it invented and quickly distributed three COVID-19 vaccines); on the other, it is perennially short of pharmaceuticals.

Bring all the prescription medications you think you’ll need, as well others you might like ibuprofen or paracetamol. If you’d like to donate some medicines to the people of Cuba, it is currently possible to bring in 10kg of medical supplies tax-free (pack them in a separate bag). 

17. Avoid dodgy cigars

Cuba has its share of jineteros (touts) spinning elaborate stories about super-cheap, high-quality cigars procured by their brother/mother/cousin from the factory. Don’t believe them. Instead, buy your cigars in state-run shops such as the Casa del Habano chain. Cigars sold on the street are invariably factory cast-offs and not genuine.

18. Driving is not as easy as you think

With light traffic on the road, driving might seem like an easy proposition, but with elevated rental prices and cars often in short supply, it’s not always so.

Add in sporadic signposting, potholed roads and a wide array of hazards – goats, horses, bicycles, kids and slow-moving, fume-belching trucks – and you might want to consider getting the bus or, at least, employing the services of a chauffeur.

19. Bring toilet paper and sanitary products

The pandemic made the provision of antiseptic hand lotion more common, but the same can’t be said of toilet paper. Carry your own roll and/or gravitate to four- or five-star hotels when you’re caught short in the city.

Re-usable pads and silicon cups, or disposable pads and tampons are must-pack items if you're expecting your period while you're in Cuba. These are in high demand here.

20. Don’t drink the water

The water won’t kill you, but it might give you a little queasiness or an upset stomach. Fortunately, bottled water is abundant and cheap. An even better idea is to bring your own filter bottle or water purification tablets.

This article was first published February 2022 and updated January 2024

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Cuban economy on the threshold of 2024: crisis, challenges and opportunities

The comprehensive reform of the economy is not only essential, it is also urgent; and the systemic nature and sequence of this process is fundamental..

Photo: Otmaro Rodríguez.

Allow me to begin this reflection on the Cuban economy with a question. Why is a comprehensive economic reform necessary, not just any reform?

The conditions that allowed the Cuban economy to function with reasonable growth rates, especially after 1975, changed abruptly in the 1990s, a trend that had already been noticeable since 1986, when, on the one hand, the external debt with the Western countries became a greater pressure at the same time that historical relations with the socialist bloc, mainly with the Soviet Union, began to deteriorate noticeably.

This situation has been making evident since then the need for a profound change in the economic model in force in the country, as well as in the development strategy, among other factors because the favorable relations with the European socialist bloc that allowed access to additional external resources were no longer available. This is in a context of hostility in U.S. policy that has not only persisted but has been reinforced.

These circumstances have been more than evident for 30 years and were what motivated the book written and published in 1995 with a proposal for restructuring the national economy ( Cuba: La Restructuración de la Economía, una propuesta para el debate,  Julio Carranza, Luis Gutiérrez, Pedro Monreal).

Since then to date there have been important changes, but we are still far from having carried out the comprehensive reform of the economy that in our opinion is essential.

In the last three decades, different situations have arisen in better and worse contexts, but in the last four years,

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the country has found itself in a crisis that begins with a 10.9% drop in GDP in 2020, followed by slight recoveries of 1.3% in 2021, 1.8% in 2022 to contract again with negative 2% in 2023, which is about to end, which means that we are in a clear recession and still far from overcoming the critical situation .

There are important knots and serious tensions, not only economic but also political and social — some reinforce others — which is why it is necessary to think and act comprehensively about the situation.

Although this text essentially refers to the economic dimension, it is necessary to understand that social and political conditions are ultimately determining factors in the course of events.

Sixty-five years after the Revolution, and in the presence of new generations, we no longer have the same historical leadership and mystique that in the first decades allowed us to assimilate and compensate for material difficulties with the enthusiasm of great transformations and important material benefits, of inclusion and progress that the great masses acquired with the revolutionary changes.

What has persisted in one way or another is a strong policy of aggression whose expression, most important but not the only one, is the economic, commercial, and financial blockade that the country suffers from the United States, which becomes more harmful in current national and international conditions.

However, overcoming the current situation of great economic difficulties is a necessity despite the blockade, and in this sense, there is much to do and transform if we have the political will and a clear compass that allows the right course.

In the 1990s, when the Special Period was decreed, the situation was also very complex and although the economic model did not change completely, important transformations occurred that by the end of the decade allowed us to emerge from that crisis.

On the one hand, the economy was reinserted into the world market with the development of new sectors such as tourism, biotechnology, the export of professional services, as well as greater access to remittances from Cubans residing abroad, etc. On the other hand, foreign investment was reinforced with greater opportunities and incentives, especially in the tourism and mining sectors.

At the same time and in the opposite direction, the sugar sector, which had historically been the backbone of the national economy, was significantly reduced. The reasons were related to the fact that after the closing of the agreements with the socialist camp, Cuban sugar exports had to go to the marginal world market of this product, where prices were then frequently below production costs. Seen today, the consequences of that decision and how it was implemented appear to have been negative. Which deserves a specific discussion.

Internally, during that decade of the 1990s, important changes also occurred with the reduction in the number of government ministries, the forms of management of the economy were made more flexible to a certain extent, and free markets were opened, such as the agricultural one, which led to a major reform of domestic prices. On the other hand, the possession and circulation of foreign currency was authorized, self-employment was legalized and in agriculture, the so-called Basic Units of Cooperative Production (UBPC) were created.

By the beginning of 2000, new international alliances appeared with the government changes in Latin America, mainly in Venezuela. These new alliances, plus the maturation of the changes already mentioned, insufficient but important, contributed to getting out of the hole in which the economy found itself at that time, although without a strategic overcoming of the structural crisis being appreciated.

The changes were significant, but the economic model was not transformed to the necessary extent. Rather in the 2000s, after the recovery, the most profound changes slowed down, social policies were essentially reinforced with the Battle of Ideas program.

Since then, in different analyses, it has been calculated that to grow more than 5% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) an investment of more than 25% is required, which is still a long way off.

Since then, it was estimated that there were more than one million surplus workers employed in the state sector . However, despite these unresolved issues, during the first eight years of the 2000s, the general situation of the country’s economy improved notably compared to the harsh hardships of the Special Period of the 1990s.

This fact reduced the recognition and development of the necessary debate about the comprehensive reform of the economy.

The international financial crisis of 2008 and the impact it had on Cuba once again renewed the issue and debate on economic reform. In 2011, the authorities and government political bodies raised the need for a longer-term solution; this gave rise to important official documents, such as the Conceptualization of the new Economic and Social Model and the Economic Guidelines.

In the last three and a half years, since mid-2020, we have entered the most critical period of the economic crisis which, as noted above, is far from being overcome. The situation is very complex and perhaps its most visible expression is the current inflation, combined with the stagnation of the Gross Domestic Product, one of the most complex circumstances that any economy can face.

Although year-on-year inflation statistics are not very precise, they vary according to sources and generally, those that come from official sources do not include the important informal market (recently recognized at just over 30%), it is evident that a very significant part of the population currently receives income below the cost of the basic food basket.

That is to say, there is not only a problem of inequality but also of poverty . Of course, taking into account the characteristics of poverty in Cuba, which is not comparable, due to social policies, with that which exists in large sectors of the marginalized population in Latin American countries.

This situation, where there is a clear generalized supply deficit, is, in my opinion, the result of several factors, mainly three:

• Clearly, the genocidal U.S. blockade policy, reinforced during the Donald Trump administration and not modified to date by the administration of President Biden.
• The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, which hit strategic sectors such as tourism and forced significant resources to be dedicated to confronting it, now adding the effects of the war in Ukraine on the world economy.
• An insufficient, late, and disintegrated response in the sense of the necessary economic transformations, both at the level of the economic model and the development strategy.

To this must be added some decisions whose results were opposite to those planned, clearly, the monetary reorganization that began in January 2021.

Today it could be said that, at an economic level, the country faces three main crises and several additional problems:

• Crisis of the economic model. I n my opinion, the most important of all. This is expressed in low levels of productivity, intensity, efficiency, and functionality of the economy, amid a clear recession.
• Macroeconomic crisis , aggravated in recent years, is expressed in the stagnation of the GDP, high levels of inflation, the budget deficit, the diversity of exchange rates, and the currently existing monetary chaos.
• Sectoral crises . Fundamentally in; a) agricultural sector (insufficient food production), b) energy sector (insufficient availability of fuel, deterioration of thermoelectric plants, low use of alternative energies). The general deterioration of the various industries must be added.

Other important problems present in the current situation would be:

• The demographic situation, characterized by a low birth rate, high levels of migration, especially of young people, flight of qualified labor force and population aging. All of this puts further pressure on the budget. The demographic decrease generates serious obstacles for the development of the country.
• Generalized difficulties that affect the functionality of the economy. Inefficient operation of banks, post offices, infrastructure, communications, insurance, etc.
• Serious problems with labor discipline, motivated by low salary incentives and high inflation. This results in reduced levels of productivity and work intensity.
• Pressure of external debt. Despite various renegotiations, it continues to be a factor with a strong impact on the economy and its potential recovery.

It would be necessary to act on all these problems at the same time, on the conjunctural, sectoral, and strategic. At the same time, to well define the sequence of the transformation process; order is essential. To define well priorities and posterities.

Some important changes were made starting in 2013. The non-state sector was expanded with greater spaces for the exercise of self-employment. Subsequently, micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs), private and cooperative, were legalized, there was some flexibility for foreign trade operations, spaces for foreign investment were expanded with new infrastructures such as the Mariel special zone, more lands in usufruct were handed over, etc.

In 2020, in official meetings of the Communist Party of Cuba and the government, a strategy is discussed and established to guide the advancement of the economy until 2030. In October 2020, talk begins about monetary reorganization.

However, throughout this period the transformations do not acquire the pace and comprehensiveness allowed by the officially approved documents (mainly the Conceptualization and the Guidelines) that seemed to express a sufficient political consensus for the changes, this even after the new Constitution was approved by the vast majority of the population in 2019, where the spaces for transformations were reinforced.

The problems and slow responses continued to put pressure on the economy. For example, overemployment was evident, which, among other factors, hampers the efficiency of state enterprises, which currently number approximately 2,900.

Over-employment in this sector has been estimated at more than one million. The need for more dynamic economic sectors is evident, as well as the need for greater foreign investment.

In my opinion, between 2011 and 2020, precious time was lost again, difficult to recover, despite the in-between brief but important opening of United States policy towards the country, during the presidency of Barack Obama.

In January 2021, it was decided to implement the so-called monetary reorganization , which was conceived as a comprehensive action on the economy in general. It had to imply an important change in relative prices to make the national economy more competitive, measurable and more dynamic. That is, the Reorganization assumed:

• Devaluation of the national currency.
• Establishing a single currency.
• Unifying exchange rates.
• Increasing the income of the population to compensate for the planned increase in prices.
• Increasing competitiveness.
• Increasing productivity.
• Increasing production.
• Increasing interest in work.

A devaluation of the national currency was carried out that suddenly multiplied part of enterprise costs by 24. This, in a very unfavorable context of contraction in supply, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, without prior measures that, as part of the reform, encouraged supply (serious sequencing problems), therefore, the economy’s response was not productive, but inflationary.

The multiplication of enterprise costs and the increase in income, fundamentally salaries (later deregulated, generating problematic salary chaos) and pensions, the distribution of enterprise profits, often without productive support and based on price increases, plus the impact of international inflation, added to a serious supply crisis due to the contraction of production and imports, gave rise to a strong inflationary process out of control with all its economic, social and political consequences.

Almost three years after the Reorganization:

• a) there is inflation that does not subside,
• b) prices grow more than personal income,
• c) there are several exchange rates and the informal one out of control,
• d) work productivity has not increased,
• e) nor the interest in formal employment,
• f) in real terms there is a diversity of currencies circulating in the country.

That is to say, given the structural weaknesses and a serious sequencing problem, the Reorganization, contrary to what had been proposed, had an inflationary and non-productive effect. This gives rise to a complex and risky situation not only economic but also social and political. Originally it was stated that the minimum wage would be 1.3% higher than the basic food basket, however, the result has been very different.

The agricultural sector (an essential factor in supply) still has insufficient production. It had its peaks in yields and production in 2016, but its decrease, which continues to this day, begins in the years 2017-2018.

In 2014, investments in agriculture were 8% of the total, since then they have begun to reduce. Today they only reach 2.7%. It means that in the midst of the crisis, they were significantly reduced. On this point, we shall return later.

Below are some specific considerations that I believe are necessary for greater articulation and comprehensiveness of the comprehensive reform:

• Positive energy must be put into the reform, without dogmas or paradigmatic paralysis.
• Conceptual issues about socialism must be redefined here and now (we have written about this at length in other previously published texts).
• The problem of sequence is essential, in addition to the systemic conception. For example, municipal decentralization on which the official discourse has insisted so much is very important, but a country is not the simple sum of its municipalities.
• The reform must be comprehensive, but it has two essential and urgent components; 1) enterprise reform, essentially of the state enterprise, 2) reform of the agricultural production subsystem.

It is also essential to rethink the financing of the economy in general and the reform in particular. There is indeed a problem of lack of resources, but there is also a problem in the use of those available. This implies the need for a profound review of the national investment policy.

Without a doubt, there is serious pressure due to insufficient external financing, explained by the blockade, debt pressure, the contraction of exports, the restriction of credits (which are not only explained but also not only due to the blockade but due to the, often unjustified, unpunctuality in payments). On the other hand, and related to the above, the insufficient availability of foreign investment.

This entire situation must focus investment policy on priorities whose first two components are, in my opinion, food production and the recovery of the public health sector, currently seriously affected. Education and social assistance had to be added.

The concentration of investments in the tourism and real estate sector of approximately 33% of the total, which, although there are no official figures regarding its sources, on several occasions government authorities have expressed that they have a high national component, should be reviewed based on greater resources for the priorities identified above.

Without a doubt, tourism is a sector with high potential in Cuba and was essential to overcome the crisis situation of the 1990s. But it is also very vulnerable, not only to international situations such as the pandemic, wars, etc., but also very sensitive to external aggression, for example, recently the U.S. administration decided to require visa processing for European citizens who visit Cuba.

Sector 1 of the economy (producer of means of production) is going to be rearticulated through a strategic discussion. This requires an effective economic policy in all sectors that uses the tools and incentives available to increase exports and import substitution. (It is not just a simple appeal to “a will to export.”)

On the other hand, it is necessary to carry out the required operations for a greater opening of international credits. This means acting on the issue of external debt, which implies a better payment policy, renegotiations, swaps, and the possibility of using certain assets, including mortgages, with rigorous analysis, as part of debt service.

Achieving greater foreign investment for the reactivation of the economy is also essential and part of the comprehensive policy; this should include the expansion of special zones, sectoral schemes, new cutting-edge technological sectors, for which Cuba still has certain advantages, as well as how to understand and favorably use the spaces opened by the new and changing international geopolitical situation, considering important players such as Russia, China, the BRICS, etc.

Returning to the topic of investment policy, as has been noted, the tourism sector has maintained more than 30% of this total. It is obvious that the investment rate expresses priorities and this leads to an essential question and reflection.

Tourism reached its peak in 2018, then dropped abruptly due to the aggressive policy of the Trump administration and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. International markets have not recovered sufficiently, and as I noted before, they are quite vulnerable to external aggression.

Cuba today has approximately 91,000 rooms for an annual tourism of less than two million visitors. The Dominican Republic, for example, has 98,000 rooms, but for a sustained tourism of more than 8 million visitors per year.

There is no sufficiently clear explanation for the current level of concentration of investment in the tourism and real estate sector, when the country has clear priorities such as food production, among others.

I insist on the idea that, although there are no figures, based on the statements that can be found, tourism investment has a high component of national resources. This means that it would seem that this disproportion is not explained, at least solely, by the decision or preference of foreign investors.

Now I will refer to the important problem of the exchange rate:

The disorder of exchange rates that currently exists is an expression of the general state of the Cuban economy, also the result of a strong devaluation that the Reorganization gave rise to, with a new fixed rate of 24 Cuban pesos for one dollar that is clearly far from what could be considered the equilibrium rate.

Later, a new rate was introduced for certain sectors of 120 Cuban pesos per dollar (population and MSMEs). The informal money market moves with a rate currently above 260 pesos per dollar. The latter, obviously, is not the equilibrium rate either because it is also affected by speculation.

Probably a rate between 150 and 180 pesos per dollar could be closer to an equilibrium rate, but what I want to highlight here is that this is a technical discussion that must be carried out in depth to decide on a more accurate monetary policy. Without an equilibrium rate as a reference, the national economy could not be competitive. This requires a specific and fundamental discussion within the comprehensiveness of the reform.

Operations are carried out today with a dual and fixed exchange rate, but with a volatile informal rate and outside the control of the State. This informal rate, which also allows quick access to foreign currency, is essential so that the non-state sector of the economy (MSMEs) can close its operational cycle.

An exchange rate regimen with greater flexibility and greater State control seems more convenient, with an active monetary and exchange rate policy based on the economic strategy, but there are two difficulties for this objective. On the one hand, the State does not have sufficient reserves and on the other, and very importantly, State enterprises do not assist the current informal foreign exchange market, without which it could not be under adequate control and dynamics.

The problem of the general growth of supply and the participation of State enterprises in the exchange market is essential. Without that, it is almost impossible to control the exchange rate. While the non-state sector closes its cycle in the informal currency market, with all its distortions, the state sector (the fundamental sector of the economy) cannot even begin that cycle, tied to administrative and bureaucratic regulations in the allocation of international currencies.

All of these arguments lead to the central hypothesis we are trying to test here. The need for comprehensive economic reform, including first of all the reform of the state enterprise and the agricultural production subsystem.

Agricultural sector

As I have already pointed out, food must be an essential component of the supply and this should largely be nationally produced, which today is insufficient and which maintains a notable level of imports. For example, as national production of pork and chicken has fallen significantly, the increase in chicken imports, mainly from the United States (possible due to the exception that the blockade has established for this item) has been almost essential, from a market that, due to the blockade, does not allow obtaining credits.

Seven years ago, agricultural production and yields contracted, while investment in agriculture has fallen from 8% in 2014 to less than 3% now.

Agricultural production, in addition to its importance for the economy in general, is also a matter of national security and must be one of the urgent priorities of the reform. Although it has been the subject of multiple generally positive measures, the agricultural sector has not undergone a fundamental reform as a production subsystem and this is essential.

After 1990, important changes were made in the sector:

• a) the creation of basic units of cooperative production,
• b) the handing over of land in usufruct to individual producers,
• c) the opening of markets.

However, it has maintained a low level of investment and a low level of current expenses. It seems evident that in the sector there are persistent problems of insufficient production scales for the non-state sector (with great weight today in food production), problems of centralization and marketing, including the repeated insufficiencies of the collection mechanism.

It means that the resources assigned to agriculture (both investment as well as current expenses) are insufficient for food production: irrigation systems, sack and packaging factories, agricultural machinery of all types, more fertilizers and herbicides, etc.

For the allocation of inputs for agriculture (the so-called technological package) there are three prioritized products: tobacco, rice, and potatoes. These receive insufficient allocations but much higher than those received by other fundamental crops. In recent times, rice and potatoes have benefited due to the climatic effects suffered by tobacco crops.

In short, it is important to understand that without an increase in resource allocations to agriculture it would be impossible to recover production to the necessary levels. This is a necessary, essential condition, although not sufficient.

If we talk about agricultural production by forms of ownership, not management, statistics show that state ownership approximately covers 79.3% of the total, cooperatives (CPA) 6.8% and individual farmers 13.9%. The question would be relevant as to whether this structure is the most appropriate or if it is convenient, even without significant modifications to ownership, to continue diversifying the forms of management, with an extension of usufruct, but with greater guarantees, scales, support and autonomy.

Changes in the agricultural production subsystem are essential: greater decentralization, larger scales to the non-state sector to allow more efficient use of land and increase yields, greater allocation of resources.

The problem of production scale is fundamental. Today, the average land in usufruct is 5.5 hectares per unit. The average for individual owners is 10.9 hectares. The average state farm is 700 hectares. Considering the contributions made by the different forms of management, including the private sector and cooperatives, it would be important to review the current scales that correspond to each of them, to expand those that are producing more and better.

Agriculture concentrates approximately 18% of the workforce, about 900,000 workers, equivalent to one-fifth of the total. Due to their form of management, not ownership, state farms own about 32.2% of the land. Cooperatives 32% and between individual owners and usufructuaries 35%.

Currently, among owners, usufructuaries and employees through these non-state forms, there are approximately 540,000 people, to which we should add the participants in the different forms of agricultural cooperatives. These statistics confirm the importance that non-state forms have today in agricultural production.

In short, this is why we insist on the need to review the scales of production and favor non-state forms through usufructs in better conditions, change the form of marketing by transforming the current collection mechanism, greater investment and resources, greater credits and a correct policy of incentives and subsidies. This is decisive for an increase in the supply of food and supply in general.

Budget deficit

A knot in the current situation of the economy is the budget deficit; in this regard, it is possible to consult interesting interventions by the current minister of finance. The deficit is monetized, the growth of money in circulation has been very notable after the reorganization, while income to the national budget has been occluded or reduced.

The problem of insufficient supply and inflation are knots that prevent salaries and pensions from being variants of adjustments because these in real terms have been taken to the extreme, which has political implications.

State enterprises, which are a fundamental contribution factor to the budget, have a very complex situation. There are many in unprofitable conditions and many others with minimum profitability rates, which implies limited contributions to the budget. This is impacted by the different exchange rates that operate in the national economy (24 to 1, 120 to 1, 260 to 1).

The fiscal policy is not sufficiently progressive and has income declaration verification problems, especially in the non-state sector, for example. Invoices are not issued as they should and invoices are a fundamental fiscal control document.

On the other hand, the bancarization policy that began during this year does not have the expected results. It is not that its purpose is positive and favorable for the general functioning of the economy. It is, but it has also suffered from problems of scale (it allows a very low level of availability of working capital for current operations, especially in the non-state sector), problems of sequence and necessary conditions, of infrastructure. That is, it was inopportune and disproportionate.

Although there was a relative reduction in the budget deficit from 17% to 11%, it has not only stagnated but is increasing again.

The National Assembly has approved a new increase in the deficit greater than 18% of the GDP, placing the national economy in an even more complex situation, since, among other factors, it hinders the effectiveness of a macroeconomic stabilization policy and therefore control over inflation.

The issue is complicated, but it should be addressed effectively. As is repeated ad nauseam, there is a serious problem of stagnation in the production of goods and services; in 2023 the GDP has contracted by 2%. This cannot be solved with rhetorical appeals to the need to produce more, to the need to create wealth. That is so, but in economics, the relevant question that must be solved is how to establish the conditions to obtain those results; that is, how to encourage production.

Therefore, enterprises (all) cannot be decapitalized through excessive tax increases as a way to balance the budget because this would affect their already scarce resources for production. It is through increases in production and profitability that a greater and healthy contribution by enterprises to the budget can be achieved. In economics, the order of the factors does affect the result. This supposes, as an essential and urgent condition, an enterprise reform, time and again postponed and underestimated.

On the other hand, spending must be well-adjusted. This was discussed in the recent National Assembly session, especially in the budgeted sector that employs more than 50% of the workforce in the state sector.

The policy for this sector must be adjusted, except for the health, education and social assistance sectors, where expenses should not be reduced, on the contrary. Although we must seek greater efficiency. These sectors are part of the very heart of the revolutionary process in Cuba, their deterioration must be stopped, and there should be no doubt about their priority.

The budget deficit should drop to at least 6%, a far cry from the recently approved level of over 18%. The parliamentary discussion on this matter has been, in my opinion, insufficient. With the current inflation, real wages and pensions have continued to adjust. The average salary today is approximately 4,000 pesos and the minimum wage is 2,100 pesos; pensions are generally even lower.

If all existing markets, essential today, are included in the calculation of expenses, the basic food basket in real terms is above these incomes, which, as we have already pointed out, is a serious problem.

Allow me to insist on a specific consideration related to the issue of income that the two most important social sectors deserve. Health and education, very affected by the real salary that their employees receive, both doctors and teachers, as well as paramedical staff and teaching assistants. The last session of the National Assembly approved an increase in salaries for these sectors, which is essential, but the necessary adjustments would have to be made so that this does not prevent the also fundamental general reduction of the deficit. Difficult and complex? Yes. Impossible? No.

New measures were approved to adjust subsidies, electricity rates, water rates, fuel prices, etc. (generally necessary measures), but due to the sensitivity and impact of these items, it is necessary to monitor their effects and make the adjustments that are required in an agile and timely manner.

In Cuba, the deficit has not worked as a stimulus to the growth of production. Unlike what happens in other international experiences, it does not grow sufficiently, even if the deficit is high. That is, the structural problems of the economy prevent a productive response to the growth in demand.

The current fiscal deficit margins are very close; this very clearly expresses the need for a greater contribution from enterprises and a more effective and progressive fiscal policy. But this is only possible with efficient and profitable enterprises.

On the income side, a more effective fiscal policy, on the expenditure side, salaries and pensions cannot be an adjustment variable, due to their current low level. Greater efficiency is needed in expenditures that should be subject to competition, the reduction of non-productive employment and a serious and effective confrontation with corruption and tax evasion.

Enterprise reform

The other and main heart of the comprehensive reform is the enterprise reform.

Today the Cuban economy is not what it was a few years ago, but much more diverse in its form of ownership and management. The public enterprise (majority) must exercise leadership in a more competitive and open system. For this, it must be profoundly transformed, not so that it stops being public but so that it stops being inefficient.

Before continuing I want to stop at a conceptual issue on which I have insisted in several texts: what is socialist or capitalist is not the enterprise, it is the system that articulates them all, led and guaranteed by the State.

The public enterprises of capitalist countries are not socialist enterprises because they are public, they are the public enterprises of a capitalist system. Likewise, private enterprises in Cuba (MSMEs) are not capitalist because they are private, they are the private enterprises of a socialist system. This conceptual definition seems to me to be of the greatest importance, because as expressed in the official discourse when calling the state enterprise as socialist, by exclusion it would be classifying all the others (which today constitute a complementary but essential sector of the economy) as capitalist, which automatically places them in an anti-systemic logic with all the consequences that this entails.

Public, cooperative and private enterprises are an integral part of a single system whose character is socialist, under the control of a State in the hands of the people, which must function democratically.

The reform of the state, public enterprise (leader of the system), and the greater opening to the private sector within the limits that are well established are two sides of the same coin and must advance simultaneously and in an integrated manner, with a systemic vision.

Enterprise profitability cannot be a precondition guaranteed by the price, much less in those public enterprises with the status of monopolies. The profit must be a result of the production and management of the enterprise, in a competition where all economic players compete on an equal footing. Obviously, there are essential exceptions that, for very justified reasons, must be subject to subsidies and price controls.

Likewise, it is very important to clearly define the difference between salary and profit distribution among workers. From a conceptual point of view, both incomes should not be mixed.

The basis of the price must be in the game of supply and demand and from there it must be regulated in a well-founded manner as necessary.

Today in many economic activities of enterprises, due to overemployment, the cost of wages is very high. This weighs down the enterprise because it maintains a workforce with low levels of productivity. In our opinion, and as is included in the 1995 book, a more precise classification of enterprises by their activity and scale is necessary.

The fundamental and strategic means of production must always be public, but this concept, the scales and the conditions must be redefined: establishing more precisely which sectors and up to what level they should be opened to the participation of non-state enterprises, without them losing leadership within the economic system.

Enterprises exist to fulfill certain functions and conditions; produce efficiently, innovate, generate employment. These indicators must be constantly measured, especially in public enterprises. Furthermore, they must operate within a regimen of strong financial constraints that compel efficiency.

Public enterprises have been handed over by their owners, the people, to the government to administer and manage them well, and there must be a clear system of accountability for the results obtained, not for their management, which must be autonomous. This is a fundamental concept.

For an enterprise law

A draft of the new enterprise law is circulating, its completion and approval is of the utmost importance to the economy. From what we know, it has components of positive advances, for example, it includes the issue of governing boards (a structure that we had already proposed in the 1995 book) to solve the so-called principal-agent problem. That is, a structure that allows greater control, not of management, but of strategies and results by the owners of the enterprise, representatives of the people and workers (principal), and the directors of the enterprise (agents) who would have the autonomy of management, but the obligation to account for the results and follow the general strategy defined by the governing board.

This is an essential issue because it has to do with how ownership relations are established, operated and reproduced, which as we know are determining factors in the character of a social-economic formation.

The text that we have seen also has other positive factors such as higher levels of decentralization and autonomy, cessation of the subordination of enterprises to sectoral ministries, etc.

However, this draft presents some insufficiencies and uncertainties:

1) only refers to state enterprises that it also calls socialist, it does not include non-state enterprises in the economy (definition problem).

2) decentralization is still limited.

3) the creation of a so-called ministry of assets is proposed, whose functions are not clear, nor how it is controlled. This presents a danger in terms of excessive centralization if very clear and precise criteria are not established in this regard; among others, which enterprises would be under its care, etc.

4) it is not clear what role the current higher business management organizations (OSDEs) would play, which until now and in most cases have hindered the necessary decentralization and autonomy of enterprises. It would be necessary to specify very well when such a structure is really convenient to only leave those that are fully justified.

5) so far, there is no clear statement on the change in the nature of planning, currently centralized and bureaucratic, when it should be more financial and strategic. The current nature of planning is an obstacle to the progress and dynamism that the economy needs.

6) the draft is not clear about the role of supply and demand and competition in price formation (it is said that enterprises will set prices).

7) it is not clear that the subsidies that are considered necessary should essentially be for the consumer, not the enterprise. On the other hand, it seems that there is still no consensus between the ministries because this law is not yet included in the agenda of the National Assembly, which is worrying due to the essential and urgent nature of this issue.

In the enterprise reform process, there are some essential issues. How to guarantee profitability? What is the appropriate limit and compatible with socialism that should be established for the privatization of assets? How to generate employment for those who are overemployed in the state sector? How to open the direct international insertion of enterprises, without intermediate enterprise structures, only the necessary technical advice from the Ministry of Foreign Trade? How to make public enterprises respond to the interests of their legitimate owners (functioning of the governing board)?

I consider it of the utmost importance to evaluate most rigorously other experiences of successful socialist reforms such as Vietnam and China. There, credit and banking, which is state-owned, are fundamental mechanisms for controlling the economy and enterprises. Credits are not and cannot be a “gift,” but rather a fundamental instrument of economic policy and with that rigor they must be used.

Decentralization and change in the character of bureaucratic planning is an urgent need.

The most advanced of the European socialist experience was the so-called LIBERMAN-KOSIGUIN reform, in the end, for different reasons, it was not successful, nor was Yugoslav self-management. They are processes that must be evaluated critically and rigorously in order, in the specific conditions of Cuba, to go beyond these limits.

Without the participation of public enterprises, most of them under conditions of decentralization, in domestic markets, including the monetary market and means of production, they could not function well. Neither do enterprises, given that these markets must be transparent in their operation and information.

Enterprise decentralization must be accompanied by strong financial restrictions and greater incentives. It is imperative to complete and approve an adequate enterprise law that is broader than the draft that is circulating and also a bankruptcy law.

Another fundamental issue is the greater articulation of the non-state sector of the economy (MSMEs, private and cooperatives) in the general dynamics of the economy and in the functioning of the markets with the necessary autonomy and guarantees, as well as the necessary and founded regulations that guarantee the integral functioning of the socialist system.

The productive chains that the entire economy needs cannot be established by decree, they are the result of the evolution of a dynamic economy and the effective use of the tools offered by economic policy.

It is essential to keep in mind the concept that I have frequently insisted on, that socialism is not the suppression of the market, nor the total suppression of private ownership. Socialism is the suppression of the hegemony of capital that must be guaranteed by the State in the hands of people’s power that can be exercised democratically . That is, to prevent the predominance of the interest of capital over the general interest of society and of workers in particular.

This must not only be reflected in the laws, but also in the way in which the policy is exercised, in the way in which social ownership over the fundamental means of production is guaranteed and in the way in which education and culture are reproduced and developed.

It is also imperative to consider the specific conditions of Cuba, an underdeveloped country, with a scarce endowment of natural resources, strongly blocked and in a very complicated geopolitical position. It would be absurd to ask a nation in these conditions to solve the great theoretical and practical problems of socialism; it must be answered based on the specific conditions of the country, without fatuous idealisms that only hinder the necessary transformations, from a socialist conception, yes, but without losing the horizon of what is historically possible here and now.

The comprehensive reform of the economy is not only essential, it is also urgent; the systemic nature and sequence of this process is fundamental.

The reform implies the whole, but its two hearts today are the reform of the state enterprise and the reform of the agricultural production subsystem. Without these two conditions, it is almost impossible to overcome the current situation of recession and inflation, regardless of how the international situation moves, which is complex and very uncertain.

The identified priorities such as food production and the recovery of public health must be supported with available resources.

Presenting and implementing a clear macroeconomic stabilization and anti-inflationary plan that today, despite official statements, is not seen, is essential to create the conditions that allow greater progress in the comprehensive reform.

The level of the current budget deficit recently approved for the year 2024 is an additional and strong obstacle to this objective.

It is also essential to redefine, focus, and efficiently finance social policies; without major taxes on the budget, as evidence shows, there is a large sector of the population today in vulnerable conditions that must be more effectively supported, especially the older population.

As we pointed out above, it is essential to conceptually redefine the socialism that should be in the concrete conditions of Cuba, today this is not merely a theoretical matter, it is a matter of practical importance, because it determines to an essential extent the course of action.

________________________________________

*This text was originally posted on the author’s Facebook account. It is reproduced with his express permission.

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Economista cubano. Consejero Regional de la UNESCO de Ciencias Sociales en América Latina y el Caribe.

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Tens of thousands protest against Canary Islands’ ‘unsustainable’ tourism model

Organisers say 50,000 turn out to call for limit on tourist numbers, saying model makes life unaffordable and puts strain on resources

Tens of thousands of people are protesting across the Canary Islands to call for an urgent rethink of the Spanish archipelago’s tourism strategy and a freeze on visitor numbers, arguing that the decades-old model has made life unaffordable and environmentally unsustainable for residents.

The protests, which are taking place under the banner “Canarias tiene un límite” – The Canaries have a limit – are backed by environmental groups including Greenpeace, WWF, Ecologists in Action, Friends of the Earth and SEO/Birdlife.

“We’ve reached the point where the balance between the use of resources and the welfare of the population here has broken down, especially over the past year,” said Víctor Martín, a spokesperson for the collective Canarias se Agota – The Canaries Have Had Enough – which helped to coordinate protests on Saturday across the eight islands.

Eleven members of Canarias se Agota have already been on hunger strike for a week to protest against the construction of two large luxury developments in southern Tenerife, which they describe as illegal and totally unnecessary.

Police said 20,000 people had turned out for the demonstrations, but organisers put the figure closer to 50,000, Spain’s TVE public television said.

“We are not against tourism,” Rosario Correo, one of the protesters, told TVE. “We’re asking that they change this model that allows for unlimited growth of tourism.”

Protesters also gathered in Madrid and Barcelona to show their support for the rallies in the Canary Islands, public television said.

Last year, 13.9 million people visited the islands, which have a population of 2.2 million. Tourism accounts for about 35% of the archipelago’s GDP – bringing in €16.9bn in 2022 alone – but local people say the industry is stressing natural resources and pricing them out of the rental market.

Figures from Spain’s National Statistics Institute show that 33.8% of people in the Canaries are at risk of poverty or social exclusion , the highest proportion for any region except Andalucía.

Martín said the regional government’s continuing focus on tourism at a time when the climate emergency was leading to cuts to water supplies made no sense. “Demand is rising in urban areas where there are more tourists,” he said. “We’ve had a very dry winter and a water emergency’s already been declared on Tenerife.

“There are going to be restrictions if there’s not more rain this month but it’s 36C here right now. This is all unsustainable and it means that we won’t even be able to keep normal levels of tourism going. And yet the authorities and the businesses here are trying to stick with this model.”

The housing situation in many parts of the archipelago was also dire because of high prices, low wages, a lack of public housing and the continuing cost of living crisis, Martín said. “I realised we’d reached the limit when I saw people who were working as hotel maids or waiters were living in shacks.

“Wages are so low that they don’t cover the basic costs of living, especially in the current crisis, which is global, but has been felt keenly in the Canaries because we have to import practically everything.”

He insisted the protest movement was not anti-tourist, pointing out that many people in the Canaries had known and liked generations of families from countries such as the UK and Germany.

“The problem isn’t the tourists,” he said. “It’s a model that was built around, and with the connivance of, a business class that doesn’t want to listen to what needs to be done, and with a political class that serves that business class instead of serving all the citizens.”

He said a complete rethink of the Canaries’ tourism model could not wait. “What we’re asking is very simple. Given that tourism is the main economic activity and the cause of all these problems, we want an immediate halt to these two mega-projects,” he said of the Tenerife developments.

“We also want a tourist moratorium that will lead to a study of the load each island can take and which will determine whether we’ve already passed the critical point. In areas where there’s an overload, we want to see a stage of degrowth of economic activity to benefit natural resources. Otherwise, you have an existing model that only benefits a very few people.”

Martín said a proper study of the problems the Canaries suffer from could have global repercussions. “This rethinking of the tourism model could put the Canaries on the map as an example of sustainable tourism development,” he said. “We could be known for something positive instead of something negative.”

Fernando Clavijo, the regional president of the Canary Islands, has said his administration is already taking action. “All the actions this government has taken have been based on a revision of this model,” he told reporters this week . “The Canaries tourist model has been a successful one, but obviously, as with anything, there are things that could be perfected.”

Over-tourism has become a major issue in many Spanish cities and regions , triggering protests and backlashes in Barcelona , and leading the authorities in Seville to consider charging visitors to explore the Andalucían city’s famous Plaza de España .

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U.S. tourist faces 12 years in prison after taking ammunition to Turks and Caicos

An Oklahoma man faces up to 12 years in prison on a Caribbean island after customs officials found ammunition in his luggage.

Ryan Watson traveled to Turks and Caicos with his wife, Valerie, to celebrate his 40th birthday on April 7. They went with two friends who had also turned 40.

The vacation came to an abrupt end when airport staff members found a zip-close bag containing bullets in the couple's carry-on luggage. Watson said it was hunting ammunition he had accidentally brought with him — but under a strict law in Turks and Caicos, a court may still impose a mandatory 12-year sentence.

"They were hunting ammunition rounds that I use for whitetail deer," Watson told NBC Boston in an interview conducted last week that aired after their first court appearance Tuesday.

"I recognized them, and I thought, 'Oh, man, what a bonehead mistake that I had no idea that those were in there,'" he said.

The couple were arrested and charged with possession of ammunition. Authorities seized their passports and explained the penalties they faced.

Valerie Watson said in the interview: "When I heard that, I immediately was terrified, because I was like we can't both be in prison for 12 years. We have kids at home, and this is such an innocent mistake."

The charges against her were dropped, and she returned home to Oklahoma City on Tuesday after the court hearing to be reunited with her two young children.

"Our goal is to get Ryan home, because we can’t be a family without Dad," she said.

The couple also spoke about the financial burden of a much longer-than-planned trip. "This is something that we may never recover from," Ryan Watson said.

The U.S. Embassy in the Bahamas issued a warning to travelers in September about a law that strongly prohibits possession of firearms or ammunition in Turks and Caicos, an overseas British territory southeast of the Bahamas that is a popular vacation spot.

It said: "We wish to remind all travelers that declaring a weapon in your luggage with an airline carrier does not grant permission to bring the weapon into TCI [Turks and Caicos Islands] and will result in your arrest."

The embassy added: "If you bring a firearm or ammunition into TCI, we will not be able to secure your release from custody."

The embassy and the government in Turks and Caicos did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The same thing happened to another American, Bryan Hagerich, of Pennsylvania, who was arrested after ammunition was found in his luggage before he tried to board a flight out of Turks and Caicos in February. He said he accidentally left it in his bag.

Hagerich was on a family vacation with his wife and two young children but has now been in the country for 70 days. He spent eight days in prison before he posted bail.

"It’s incredibly scary. You know, you just don’t know what the next day may bring — you know, what path this may take," Hagerich told NBC Boston.

"You know, it’s certainly a lot different than packing your bags and going away with your family for a few days. It’s been the worst 70 days of my life," he said.

Hagerich, once a professional baseball player, was drafted by the Florida Marlins in the MLB 2007 June amateur draft from the University of Delaware.

His case goes to trial May 3.

Patrick Smith is a London-based editor and reporter for NBC News Digital.

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The Americas

Cuban government defends plans to either cut rations or increase prices.

The Associated Press

An American classic car makes its way down a street in Havana, Cuba, Nov. 11, 2023. Ramon Espinosa/AP hide caption

An American classic car makes its way down a street in Havana, Cuba, Nov. 11, 2023.

The Cuban government said Friday it will have to either increase prices for fuel and electricity, or reduce rations for basic supplies. President Miguel Díaz-Canel said such difficult measures were needed for difficult times, after the minister of the economy said Cuba's economy contracted between 1% and 2% this year, and inflation ran at about 30%. There were problems in the tourism industry — Cuba's main source of income — and in farm production. "This is a question of complicated measures, as complicated as are these times," Díaz-Canel said. "I emphatically deny that this is neo-liberal plan against the people, nor a crusade against small businesses, nor an elimination of the basic market basket" that Cubans can get with government coupons. Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz said that because of economic problems, the government will have to raise prices for gasoline, electricity and gas, or reduce the amount of food and other basics contained in government ration books. The remarks came in appearances at the closing sessions of Cuba's National Assembly of People's Power, effectively Cuba's congress. The economic crisis in Cuba has already pushed hundreds of thousands of people to leave in a bid to reach the United States. Long lines at gasoline stations had gotten shorter recently, but the news of possible price increases could prompt a rush to fill up. "Since they spoke (in congress), I haven't been able to get gas yet," Alberto Corujo, a 54-year-old driver, said as he waited in a long line at a gas station in Havana. Mercy García, a secretary at a state-owned business, said times were indeed tough. "The situation is very hard for people of all social levels, because wages don't keep up and prices have gone through the roof," said García. Visits by tourists are still only at 64% of the level in 2019, before the coronavirus pandemic. Sugar production was down, and the government had to import food.

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Canadian family receives wrong body after father died on Cuban vacation

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LAVAL, Quebec (AP) — A family in Quebec is searching for answers after discovering that their father’s remains didn’t make it to Canada from Cuba, where he died while on vacation, and instead received the remains of another man.

Funerals for Faraj Allah Jarjour were scheduled for Sunday and Monday. Instead, his daughter Miriam Jarjour had been desperately calling and emailing as many officials as she can, trying to find his body.

“Up until now we have no answers,” Jarjour said. “Where is my father?”

Jarjour said she was swimming with her 68-year-old father in the ocean near Varadero, Cuba, during a family vacation on March 22 when he suddenly had a heart attack and died.

Because there were no medical facilities, his body was covered and left on a beach chair in the hot sun for more than eight hours until a car arrived to take it to Havana, Jarjour said.

After that, it’s not clear what happened.

Jarjour said she followed the directions given to her by the Canadian consulate, and paid $10,000 Canadian (US$7,300) to have the body returned home to the family.

However, the casket that arrived late last week contained the body of a Russian man who was at least 20 years younger than Jarjour’s father. Unlike her father, the body also had a full head of hair and tattoos.

Jarjour said the stranger’s body has been sent to his country, but she and her family don’t know where her father is.

When Jarjour contacted Canada’s consular authorities in Cuba, they blamed the company in the island that coordinates the return of the remains. Since then, she says she has been emailing other government officials, including her Member of Parliament, who has agreed to reach out to Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly.

“I’m honestly destroyed,” said Jarjour. “Up until now we have no answers. We’re waiting. I don’t know what to tell you.”

Jarjour described her father as an active man who didn’t smoke or drink. The Syrian-born family man was “always smiling,” she said.

The ordeal has left her mother exhausted, said Jarjour. She and her brother are struggling through their own grief while trying to get answers from authorities who all seem to deny responsibility.

So far, the family has spent $25,000 Canadian (US$18,248), including $15,000 Canadian (US$10,950) for funeral services that have been put on hold.

Global Affairs Canada said in an email that consular officials are working with Cuban authorities and the family to resolve the issue.

But Jarjour doesn’t feel she is getting the answers she needs and is hoping Joly will personally intervene to pressure Cuban authorities.

“What I want is someone to help me find my father,” she said.

Carnival cruise ship rescues nearly 30 people from adrift vessel

A Carnival Cruise Line ship rescued nearly 30 people who were stuck at sea on Sunday.

The crew on Carnival Paradise saved 28 Cuban nationals who were signaling for help on a vessel that was adrift around 2:30 p.m. The cruise ship was headed from Tampa, Florida, to Roatan in Honduras at the time.

“The bridge team onboard spotted the vessel and turned the ship around to rescue them,” Carnival said in a news release . “All were taken aboard, given food and were seen by the medical team.” The cruise line also notified the U.S. Coast Guard Sector Key West and officials in Roatan.

The Coast Guard did not immediately respond to USA TODAY’s request for comment.

The ship was set to visit Roatan on Monday. Carnival Paradise is on a five-day Caribbean cruise that departed from Tampa on Saturday, according to CruiseMapper .

The news comes after Celebrity Cruises’ Celebrity Apex ship rescued seven people in a small vessel adrift between Cuba and Mexico earlier this month. Another Carnival ship, Carnival Jubilee, also rescued two people stuck in a kayak off the coast of Mexico’s Isla Mujeres in January.

Nathan Diller is a consumer travel reporter for USA TODAY based in Nashville. You can reach him at [email protected].

'My misery, your paradise': The problem with tourism in the Canary Islands

Protesters have taken increasingly extreme measures, with one group going on an "indefinite" hunger strike.

News reporter @jos_franks

Saturday 27 April 2024 08:44, UK

A wave of demonstrations have swept the Canary Islands as locals protested against a tourism model they say has plundered the environment, priced them out of housing and forced them into precarious work.

The seven main Canary Islands are home to 2.2 million people - and welcomed almost 14 million international visitors in 2023, up 13% from the previous year.

The protests were not aimed at individual tourists, activists say, but at the governments that have created a system that skews so much in favour of investors at the expense of local communities.

The tourism industry accounts for 35% of gross domestic product (GDP) in the Canary Islands and local residents who spoke to Sky News agree the islands can't survive without tourism.

But they are also questioning whether local communities and the environment can survive if things stay the way they are.

What's the problem? Tourism is a 'cash cow' - but not for locals

If you're looking for what's behind the wave of protests, you need to look back decades, Sharon Backhouse tells Sky News.

Along with her Canarian husband, she owns GeoTenerife, which runs science field trips and training camps in the Canary Islands and conducts research into sustainable tourism.

The tourism model in the Canary Islands hasn't been updated since before the tourism boom of the 1980s, when the islands were "trying desperately" to attract investment, she explains.

The answer back then was a model that was "incredibly generous" to investors, who only pay 4% tax and can send the profits earned in the Canaries back to the firm's home country, Ms Backhouse explains.

But the model hasn't changed.

That's created a situation where "more and more of these giant, all inclusive resort hotels" are being built, and the proceeds of this "incredible cash cow" aren't shared equitably with the local population, she says.

"It is absurd to have a system where so much money is in the hands of a very few extremely powerful groups, and is then funnelled away from the Canary Islands," she says.

"We're seeing really low salaries, zero-hour contracts and awful working conditions in some of these hotels."

Ms Backhouse was at the 20 April protest in Tenerife and says she has "never seen anything like it" in terms of Canarians being united for a single cause.

'My misery, your paradise'

Earlier this year there was a spate of graffiti in Tenerife.

Andy Ward, director of Tenerife Estate Agents, tells Sky News the media coverage of a smattering of "tourists go home" graffiti has been "100x greater than the on-the-ground reality", where there is little visible animosity.

But there was one spray-painted message that sums up the gulf between Canary Islands residents and the tourists who flock there: "My misery, your paradise".

More than a third of the population of the Canary Islands - nearly 800,000 people - are at risk of poverty or social exclusion, according to a recent report from the environmental group Ecologists in Action.

The average wage for restaurant staff and cleaners is between €1,050 and €1,300 a month, Mr Ward says, while the cost of renting an apartment can be almost as much.

'Shanty towns' in the shadow of luxury

One of the main issues is the dearth of affordable or social housing, Mr Ward says.

"The governments here have completely neglected this need, instead selling land for more hotels and selling land for luxury villas and high-end apartments, which locals are unable to afford."

What has caused anger is property managers renting out properties to tourists that are "completely inappropriate and inadequate", such as small apartments in residential buildings.

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The regulations on short-term lets "are a complete mess and a mish-mash", he says. Landlords aren’t incentivised to let their properties long-term because they must sign up to long leases, and if tenants default on the rent it can take 18 months to evict them.

His views are echoed by Kris Jones, a British citizen who was born in Tenerife, taking over the bar his parents owned in Playa de la Americas, the Drunk’n Duck.

Many hotel employees are forced to live in the multiple motorhome sites that have popped up around the south of the island because they can’t afford anything else, he says.

"Shanty towns" is what Ms Backhouse calls them, built in the shadow of "uber luxury hotels".

Mr Jones questions why planning permission has been granted to hotels without ensuring their employees will be able to live nearby.

He says the idea the island's population hates foreign visitors is "utter garbage".

He stresses that the protests were against the government - not tourists.

"It's nothing to do with the behaviour of British tourists, and isn't even part of the agenda at all," he tells Sky News.

Hunger strike to stop hotels

Protesters say they are having to take increasingly drastic actions to have their voices heard.

Subsequently six members of Canarias Se Agota - which translates to the Canary Islands Are Exhausted - have been on hunger strike since 11 April.

As well as demanding a halt to new tourism developments and a limit to the number of visitors, the campaigners want to stop the development of two luxury resorts in Tenerife.

Both developments faced legal hurdles on environmental grounds that had paused construction, but stop work orders were lifted earlier this year.

Campaigners maintain the developments breach environmental laws - claims the developers deny - and have committed to continuing the hunger strike until the government intervenes, despite some strikers needing hospital treatment.

The hunger strikers, who have not been named, were among fellow protesters on the streets of Tenerife on 20 April.

A spokesperson for the campaign said: "If anything happens to any of our comrades... you (Fernando Clavijo - president of the Canary Islands) will have to face the fury of the people."

The strikers met with the Canary Islands president on 23 April, but their demands were rejected.

Representatives of the strikers said on 26 April the "medical condition of the six is deteriorating, but they are determined to continue" until their demands are met.

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Protesters are also demanding "access to respectable housing", an "eco-tax" and "immediate measures to put an end to the raw sewage discharges into the sea".

Salvar La Tejita, an environmental organisation which helped organise the mass protest, says: "It is vital to clarify that these protests are not against the tourists or tourism in general, but are against the political class, administrations, hotel chains, and constructors who are jointly responsible for the unsustainable circumstances which Tenerife is now in.

"This platform is not in any way responsible for the graffiti messages 'Tourists Go Home' which have been sprayed in and around many tourist resorts.

The environmental cost of tourism

The Canary Islands are a "biodiversity jewel in the Atlantic", Ms Backhouse says - but they haven't been fully protected or valued.

Politicians in the past have said the development of the controversial resorts can't be stopped "just because of a weed", she says.

"These aren't just weeds. What they're actually doing is interfering with an ecosystem which will have difficulty surviving if you plonk a resort right in the middle of it."

The building of these resorts has an environmental costs as "beautiful landscapes are cemented over", Ms Backhouse says - and the cost only mounts once they open.

"The problem with these resorts is that we just don't have enough resources in terms of water, what happens to all the rubbish, how is it all recycled.

"Locals are feeling disenfranchised from their spaces because it all becomes tourist territory.

"Towns and villages that locals grew up in or would go on holiday in suddenly are completely unrecognisable."

What solutions are on the table?

One of the proposals is a tourist tax which would be invested in protecting the environment.

Ms Backhouse says the hotel industry is against it and the government is nervous about it - but GeoTenerife's research indicates it wouldn't put tourists off.

"I think the reality is very few people will cancel their holiday because they have to pay a little bit of money that goes towards protecting the landscapes they're coming to see."

Hoteliers have proposed instead putting up IGIC, which is similar to VAT, but Ms Backhouse says that isn't welcomed by campaigners "because again, that just puts the onus on the locals to prop up the system".

A tourist tax is one part of the answer to protect the environment, but it doesn't answer the question of job insecurity and unaffordable housing.

Ms Backhouse says it is encouraging to see solutions proposed, but "it's going to take something far more wide-ranging to put this train on a more sustainable track".

Impending crackdown on holiday homes

A draft law is expected to be passed this year which would ban newly built properties from becoming short-term rentals and toughen up the rules for existing properties.

It comes as official figures show the number of rental beds on the island reached 220,409 in March this year - an increase of more than 40,000 from the same point in 2023.

Canaries regional tourism chief Jessica de Leon told the Reuters news agency that enforcement support for the islands' 35 inspectors is key to the success of the new rules.

"We are going to empower [the police] so that they can act when fraudulent behaviour is detected in homes," she said, adding that the plan could involve 1,300 people, which would include all of the islands' police forces.

"The first step is to contain the growth, the second is to clean up [existing listings]," said Canaries director of tourism Miguel Rodríguez.

An example of the crackdowns to come occurred on 16 April, when police raided a property in Tenerife after its owner was reported for listing the building's rooftop as a campsite on Airbnb, offering renters tents for €12 (£10) a night.

Read more: Tourist dies after falling into sea in Tenerife Why are university students protesting in the US?

The plans have not proved popular with landlords, who would be forced to comply with the new rules within five years.

"Everything that the government is trying to impose is problematic," says a spokesperson for Ascav, the Canary Islands Vacation Rental Association, adding it is "the most restrictive" legislation of its kind in Europe.

They believe around 95% of the existing holiday homes that abide by current laws will not be able to meet the new criteria, which includes getting consent from local authorities to open, meeting higher energy classification thresholds, having a minimum surface area and more in a long list of "impossible compliance".

"The consequences will be immediate," they warn. "If holiday homes are banned on the islands, visitors who demand this type of accommodation will choose other destinations, Canary Islanders will be even poorer, bars, restaurants, rent a cars, supermarkets, leisure activities, etc. will lose economic activity. Undoubtedly, we all lose."

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Ascav acknowledges "something is going wrong" for the island's economy, but argues it's not down to those providing holiday homes, nor the tourists Canarians "love".

"The message is for our governments, for their passivity, incompetence and lack of planning," they say.

"They are the ones that have allowed that the resources of tourism has not to been shared with the local population. Locals has been excluded because governments preferred permitting to exploit the territory and tourism to the maximum, without any return for the islands and their inhabitants.

"The solution is to listen to ourselves, to listen to our visitors, to listen and protect to the Canary islanders, to integrate, to plan, to be sustainable, to grow with, not at the expense of, to be responsible for the territory and the well-being of its people, to diversify, to ensure the quality of the destination.

"Our problems have to be resolved by politicians, but they lack will and predisposition, that's why we are fed up."

What have politicians said?

The islands' president said the day before the 20 April protests that he felt "proud" the region is a leading Spanish tourism spot, but acknowledged more controls are needed.

"We can't keep looking away. Otherwise, hotels will continue to open without any control," Fernando Clavijo told a news conference.

Two days after the protest, Mr Clavijo posted on X saying: "What happened last Saturday in the streets of Canarias leaves a message that we share. Canarias has to review its model, where we want to go.

"It had to be done during the pandemic, but it is a challenge that we assumed and on which we are already working with the councils, with the city councils and that we must face as a whole in society."

He has called a meeting of island presidents and Canary Island administrators on 30 April in the hope of finding a solution.

Related Topics

• Canary Islands