EXPERT ANALYSIS

As Cuba grapples with an economic collapse, political instability and social unrest, the failure of the revolutionary model has reached a definitive turning point.

Silvia Pedraza is a professor of sociology and American culture at the University of Michigan who has spent years documenting the evolution of the Cuban Revolution and its impact on its citizens. Applying her expertise in the island’s political shift and the resulting movement, she discusses how the loss of revolutionary legitimacy and the crumbling of state infrastructure have forced mass exodus.

What is the nature of the current multifaceted crisis facing Cuba and why is the revolutionary model considered a failure?

Economically, Cuba currently has nothing to export other than doctors. For most of its history, it was the world’s leading sugar producer. But it failed to invest in repairing and upgrading its sugar mills, which sorely needed it. A few years before his death, Fidel Castro put the last nail in the coffin by shutting down more than half of them. Thus, today Cuba only has doctors to export, which is another problem—turning people into commodities and not giving the doctors adequate salaries for their work.

Politically, Cuba at present lacks legitimacy for its government. After Fidel Castro died, his messianic and charismatic leadership ended. His reign was followed by Raúl Castro, his brother, who always supported him, backing him up with the military. Raúl lacked Fidel’s charisma—his ability to turn every problem in Cuba into a vision of the people’s need to sacrifice for a better future. Raúl was a reformer, and he tried to introduce some market reforms, allowing some self-employment in Cuba, though his reforms were not large enough to make a significant difference. Raúl did succeed in the international scene, as, together with Obama, he restored political relations between Cuba and the U.S. Both Fidel and Raúl had the legitimacy of having fought in the Cuban Revolution, rendering it victorious. Raúl chose Miguel Díaz-Canel, the new president, as his successor. Díaz-Canel, however, lacks the legitimacy of the Revolution, is not at all charismatic, and has not been able to manage the Cuban economy to solve any of its problems.

Both the economic and political troubles on the island have resulted in strong and wide social protests from the people, who no longer believe in the vision of sacrificing themselves for a better future and who are daily beset with real problems: lacking food for sustenance, lacking gasoline for transport, and suffering blackouts from a lack of electricity. They live on the remittances they receive from relatives and friends who long ago left the island—either pushed out as exiles or as refugees who simply sought a better life elsewhere—in the U.S., Spain and Latin America. From a nation that used to be 11.2 million people only a decade ago, today estimates put the nation at close to only 8 million people. It is a sad ending for a nation that, despite the inequalities in its midst when the Revolution triumphed (of social class and race, as well as gender), was prosperous. The communist utopia in which so many believed, and for which so many sacrificed, simply failed—completely.