Increased Aggression and Hard Times, and Moving Forward And This Issue's Contents

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.13169/intejcubastud.13.2.0173
• Published date: 01 December 2021
• Date: 01 December 2021
• Pages: 173-181

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EDITORIAL AND ISSUE CONTENTS

INCREASED AGGRESSION AND HARD

TIMES, AND MOVING FORWARD

AND THIS ISSUE’S CONTENTS

The starting point for talking about what is happening in Cuba today, and what

people in Cuba are talking about today, has to be that times on the Island are not

just hard, but very hard. It is true that, by measures of such daily essentials as

food and energy (electricity and petroleum), they are not as bad as during depths

of the Special Period, but “not-as-bad-as-the-worst” does not change that they

are very hard. Macro-economic figures confirm what anyone living on the Island

knows from their daily existence. COVID hit Latin America and the Caribbean

hard in 2020, causing an average contraction of 7.5 percent. Cuba contracted 11

percent. The main contribution to this 3.5 percent worse economic performance

than the regional average was Trump’s dramatic intensification of the Blockade

with an additional 242 measures, a Blockade that was already costing Cuba

roughly 5 percent of its GDP every year before this injection of steroids.

The difficulty of daily life in Cuba over the last year and a half has received

extensive coverage from the usual spectrum of perspectives on “all things

Cuban” – from the opponents of Cuba’s project to build socialism, from the

international press, from the supporters of Cuba’s project to build socialism

and from the Cuban government. The organisation and visibility of the oppo-

nents of the US Blockade around the world, but especially in the US (and its

near-neighbour and close ally Canada) where this is particularly important,

have both increased markedly. At the same time, Biden has broken his cam-

paign promise to pursue and develop the Obama–Raúl Castro opening, going

so far as to add still more Blockade measures (albeit largely symbolic) at the end

of July 2021. This brief introductory editorial will not address either of these

very important issues, but rather the much less internationally discussed issue:

what is Cuba doing today to move the country forward, whether measures

already under development for years are being implemented today, or new

measures arising directly in response to this crisis?