Cuba’s dictatorship turned 65, and Cubans are fleeing like never before | Opinion

The 65th anniversary of Cuba’ s dictatorship on Jan. 1 drew little international attention, but it should have made headlines across the world: It took place amid an unprecedented stampede of Cubans from the island.

A record number of Cubans have arrived in the United States over the past two years, most of them without U.S. immigration papers.

According to the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol Agency, nearly 425,000 Cubans were intercepted while trying to cross the Mexico-U.S. border over the last two fiscal years, which ended in September.

If we add the number of Cubans who migrated legally to the United States under family reunification or parole programs during that period, the total figure reaches 561,800.

That means that more than 5% of Cuba’s population has fled the island over the past two years, more than at any time since the 1959 communist revolution.

The latest mass exodus of Cubans is a result of both growing government repression following the massive anti-government protests of July 2021, and of one of the island’s worst economic crises in recent history.

Many Cubans have lost hope that anything will change on the island, and are fleeing the country. The island has more than 1,000 political prisoners, according to Amnesty International, which makes it one of the countries with the most prisoners of conscience per capita.

Cuba is also one of the few countries in the world that doesn’t disclose official poverty figures, which makes it hard to measure the island’s misery. The Madrid, Spain-based Cuban Observatory of Human Rights, a non-government organization, said in a recent study that 88% of Cubans live in extreme poverty.

Cuba’s economy grew only 1.5% in 20123, and is likely to grow only 1.4% in 2024, according to the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC.) That would make Cuba, alongside Haiti, the slowest growing economy in Latin America in 2024, ECLAC says.

Cuba’s minimum wage is only $7.50 a month at the black market rate, which is the one that average Cubans use for their everyday transactions. A pack of 30 eggs costs the equivalent of nearly two months of minimum wages.

The way most Cubans survive is working privately — most often illegally — outside the government-controlled system, or receiving remittances from their relatives in Miami or Madrid.

“Cuba is totally bankrupt,” says Emilio Morales, head of the Havana Consulting Group, a Miami-based consultancy. “If Cuba were located in Central America, instead of being an island, half the population would have already left.”

In fact, Cuba has been a non-viable economy ever since late dictator Fidel Castro took power in 1959 and began to confiscate domestic and foreign companies. But until recently, Cuba managed to keep its economy going thanks to huge subsidies from Russia, China and — more recently — Venezuela and Mexico.

But even Cuba’s ideological allies have lost patience with its decrepit regime, which has consistently failed to pay its debts. In many Cuban rural towns, there are almost daily electricity blackouts since Venezuela cut part of its oil subsidies to the island.

Cuba’s prime minister, Manuel Marrero, admitted last month that his country is going through economic “difficulties.”

As usual, the Cuban regime blames the “criminal U.S. imperialist blockade,” neglecting to mention that the U.S. trade embargo on Cuba has numerous exceptions, including medicines, and that Cuba can trade with any other country in the world.

To overcome its latest economic crisis, the Cuban regime has adopted a new austerity package, and is trying to convince exiles to invest in the country.

But it won’t work. The Cuba regime had its best chance to attract investments when former President Obama re-established relations with the island in 2015, and the Cuban regime blew it. Instead of allowing greater economic and political freedoms, it continued repressing the private sector.

The unprecedented Cuban exodus of the past two years is only the latest reminder that the island’s dictatorship has been a monumental failure.

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