Experts fear a ‘Caribbean perestroika’ in which only those close to the regime will benefit
14ymedio, Madrid, 19 June 2026 / Crony capitalism, Caribbean perestroika, a Sandinista-style piñata, or, as economist Mauricio de Miranda has long been describing it, a “transition from bureaucratic socialism to authoritarian and patrimonial capitalism” – this was the reception given to the avalanche of reforms announced on Thursday by the Cuban regime in its desperate attempt to persuade the Trump administration to lift the energy blockade and other sanctions. References to the Chinese or Vietnamese model recur throughout the reactions of several critical experts, in particular Pavel Vidal.
“Many of the announced measures coincide with proposals that Cuban economists like myself have been advocating for years,” writes the Cuban economist based in Colombia. “Among them are the liberalisation of agriculture, the removal of unnecessary restrictions on the private sector, the dismantling of the state monopoly on foreign trade, the creation of more flexible channels for incoming foreign investment, and the participation of the private sector in the financial system.”
The problem, Vidal adds, lies “in the implementation,” and this represents “another attempt to announce transformations in order to buy time, without fully accepting the political and institutional implications of a deep economic reform.” The expert argues that “no internal reform can produce significant results if it is not accompanied by a negotiation with the United States that makes it possible to lift the energy blockade and ease the sanctions.”
The expert argues that “no internal reform can produce significant results if it is not accompanied by a negotiation with the United States that makes it possible to lift the energy blockade and ease the sanctions.”
This Thursday, Vice President JD Vance referred to the matter, describing the conversations in these terms: “Right now we are talking with the Cuban Government about how they might change their way of acting to achieve that. We’ll see what they do and, obviously, if they do one thing, we will do another. If they make smart decisions, we are going to have a much better relationship with that Island.” A few hours later came the details of the measures, but for the moment there is silence from the White House.
Vidal points to another government incapacity: the technical and administrative capacity to provide a legal and theoretical corpus that would put into practice the measures that today exist only on paper.
Among them, one in particular has caught the attention of economists in these first hours: item number 17, which proposes to “transform the socialist state enterprise into a commercial company through shares or participations.” Its implications are so far-reaching that De Miranda Parrondo himself says of it: “Something like this has been approved by the Central Committee of the PCC and the National Assembly. Everyone is responsible in the event that this comes about.”
The expert, also resident in Cali, considers that this point “will be the express route for family members and close associates of those in power to become ‘shareholders’ without anyone knowing where their ‘capital’ came from. And that ‘transition’ will be directed by the Communist Party of Cuba to build the ‘Crony Capitalism’ with which certain politicians from certain powers will have no qualms about doing business,” he censures.
De Miranda Parrondo acknowledges, in realistic terms, that any country in Cuba’s current situation needs to sell state assets, given that so-called “ownership by all the people” has destroyed them, but he considers it imperative that there be “institutional and political changes that are nowhere on the horizon” and “a capital market with clear, transparent rules and equal opportunities,” so that those who benefit are not simply those closest to the elites.
On item 17, legal expert Eloy Viera also focuses – almost exclusively – seeing the set of proposals as, if realised, “a profound transformation of Cuba’s economic model,” one that “would advance towards an economy with far more elements of capitalism, albeit without any political opening or mechanisms for the democratisation of power.”
The expert concentrates on the conversion of state enterprises into commercial companies, considering it a break with what has always been the foundation of the national economy. With this measure, any private investor or otherwise, Cuban or not, may acquire property that until now belonged to the State, although the State would retain a stake in strategic sectors. “The proposal breaks with one of the principles that have traditionally defined Cuba’s business system: the non-existence of a capital market and the impossibility of private individuals or legal entities participating as shareholders.”
All the proposed changes finally contemplate the existence of large-scale private companies, as exist in other countries. For Viera too they resemble “the reform processes promoted by China and Vietnam”; he values the “historic break with the financial model established following the nationalisations” that allowing private banking represents.
“With a non-existent rule of law, the accelerated privatisation of state enterprises without robust legal safeguards tends to end in the capture of state assets by insiders well connected to power. One thing leads to the other. Without exception.”
Pedro Monreal, an economist resident in Spain, has also focused his criticism on the aforementioned item 17, in which he sees “the ‘crony capitalism’ of the Russian transition.” “With a non-existent rule of law, the accelerated privatisation of state enterprises without robust legal safeguards tends to end in the capture of state assets by insiders well connected to power. One thing leads to the other. Without exception,” he concludes.
Michael Bustamante, a History professor at Florida International University, has also commented on this aspect, in which he detects the hand of the White House. “All that would remain would be to also allow the sale of shares directly to foreigners, and we would be looking at an ideal scenario for the ‘soft takeover’ promoted from Washington,” he argues. To which one user replies: “That’s what they’re already doing with Sherritt.”
The specialist, who considers the economic changes to be far-reaching at that level, regrets that they did not come years ago. “Imagine if similar announcements had come 10, or even 5 years ago,” he said.
The only clear political reaction at this stage has come from María Elvira Salazar, while her colleague Carlos A. Giménez has limited himself to retweeting a video by journalist Mario J. Pentón criticising the measures for leading the Island down the Chinese or Vietnamese path, and Mario Díaz-Balart has not even done that. The congresswoman wrote on her X account that “Díaz-Canel is desperate [and] no longer knows what to invent to extend his political agony.” She reproaches him for announcing measures he has previously criticised, and concludes by saying that “the only thing that can save Cuba is the end of the dictatorship and the return of freedom.”
But the true word on the other side of the Straits rests with Rubio and Trump, who for now continue to say nothing.
Translated by GH.
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