In late September, The Nation’s publisher, Katrina vanden Heuvel, and its editor, D.D. Guttenplan, met with Cuban president Miguel Díaz-Canel for an exclusive interview in New York.
It was the president’s first-ever interview in the United States. They discussed the economic crisis facing his island nation, the future of its socialist model, and the impact of continued hostility from Washington.
D.D. Guttenplan: You are the first Cuban president born after the Revolution. What does the Revolution mean today?
Miguel Díaz-Canel: First, I would like to thank you for doing this interview, which is taking place on the occasion of this visit we have made as part of the Cuban delegation to the 78th session of the United Nations General Assembly. I thank you for allowing me to address the American public, especially the millions of Latinos and Cubans who live in the United States.
My generation was born with the Revolution. I was born in 1960 and celebrated my first birthday the day after the victory at Playa Girón [Bay of Pigs]. The birth and life of the revolution marked my generation.
From a young age, we were motivated to get involved in all the opportunities afforded us by the Revolution: to improve ourselves, acquire knowledge, partake in culture, science, and sports, and enjoy access to healthcare. We were also aware of the need to fulfill our duties and not just be the recipient of rights but also address the challenges the country was facing.
Of course, the Revolution has gone through different stages. My childhood memories are of very complicated years. Later, we enjoyed a period of greater economic ease in the ’70s and ´80s, when we had closer relations with the socialist camp and, in particular, with the Soviet Union. Then came the Special Period, which was another challenging time.
From 2000 onward, the country entered a new economic growth phase and the outlook improved. Today, however, we find ourselves in a situation you have yourself described as “complex.” International relations are complicated in such an uncertain world, especially with the problems brought on by the pandemic.
As the representative of an entire generation that has come to assume the responsibilities of political life and government, I feel an enormous commitment to the Revolution, to the Cuban people, and to Fidel [Castro] and Raúl [Castro], who have been visionary leaders to whom we owe our gratitude and recognition.
We define ourselves as a continuity generation, although not a generation of linear continuity. Continuity does not mean a lack of transformation, but just the opposite: a dialectical continuity, so that, as we transform, advance, and try to perfect our society as much as possible, we do not abandon our convictions about building socialism in our country with as much social justice as possible.
That is our lifelong commitment and vision. It requires great effort, achievement, and altruism, and this demands much from us, especially under difficult circumstances.
Katrina vanden Heuvel: There are many young people in Cuba today. In that context, I wonder how you envision the future of the Cuban economy. The blockade is brutal, of course, yet there is also a sense among young people that, without change, they may not see their future in Cuba.
MDC: There is something unique about the current moment. We have been living under a blockade since we were born. For example, my generation, that of the 1960s, was born with the blockade. Our children and grandchildren— I have grandchildren— have grown up under the sign of the blockade. However, the blockade changed significantly in the second half of 2019. It became even harsher than before.
The new, harsher blockade was the result of two factors. One was the application of more than 243 measures by the Trump administration, which strengthened the blockade by internationalizing it and applying for the first time Chapter Three of the Helms-Burton Act. In doing so, they cut off our access to foreign capital, international convertible currencies and remittances; North Americans could no longer visit Cuba, and they placed financial pressure on banks and financial groups that had business with Cuba.
And to top it all off, nine or ten days before leaving office in January 2021, Trump included us on a bogus list that says Cuba is a country that supports terrorism—which is absolutely false. The whole world knows about Cuba’s humanist vocation and about how we contribute to peace. We don’t send the military anywhere; we send doctors. And even then, when we send our doctors abroad to act in solidarity and provide services to other parts of the world, the United States claims that we are actually involved in human trafficking.
At the same time, just as the economic situation was worsening, Covid-19 hit and greatly affected Cuba, as it did everywhere. However, during the Covid-19 pandemic, the United States government acted in a perverse manner and tightened the blockade. I single out the government and not the people of the United States because we have deep respect and bonds of friendship with the people of the United States.
I believe that the US government thought the Revolution would not survive that moment. The pandemic peaked at a very high level in Cuba and lasted for the better part of 2021. When it began in 2020, we still didn’t have vaccines or even the possibility of obtaining the vaccine.
Then, there was a breakdown at the medical oxygen plant in Cuba. We ran out of oxygen and the US government was putting pressure on companies in the Caribbean and Central America to not supply us with oxygen. We also had to expand the intensive care wards, and the US government responded by pressuring companies that manufactured and marketed ventilators not to supply Cuba.
The situation was critical and came with a huge media campaign to discredit the Cuban Revolution. We turned to our health system—an efficient, free, and high-quality system that considers health a right—and we turned to our scientists, especially younger ones. Our scientists designed the ventilators and developed five vaccine candidates, of which three are today recognized for their efficacy. And that saved the country. However, we emerged from the pandemic with many problems, many of them accumulated since before 2019.
We have shortages of medicines, food, and fuel. We experience prolonged blackouts that harm the population and directly impact people’s lives, particularly the youth. I believe that our education process has impressed on the youth the importance of the situation we are going through. Still, we, as a generation, have an enormous challenge: to ensure that this momentary distancing of the Cuban youth—young people born during the Special Period who have lived all these years in a really difficult economic and social situation—does not lead to an ideological rupture with the Revolution and with the country itself.
It is true that there is a greater migration than at other times. But that has occurred periodically in the history between Cuba and the United States. The most intense migratory events have always been associated with periods in which the United States has applied aggressive policies that have worsened the Cuban economic situation. By means of the Cuban Adjustment Act [of 1966] and other measures, the United States has favored illegal, unsafe, and disorderly immigration of Cubans—while not extending those policies to emigrants from other countries.
I learned a lot when we overcame the pandemic; I came to understand the way Cubans resist as a form of creative resistance. To resist creatively means not just to resist by staying in place but to move forward by creating and taking advantage of the talent and strength of our people to overcome adversities. One example of that were the vaccines. Only five [other] countries in the world were able to develop vaccines, and all of them are developed countries. Cuba is the only developing country that was able to do that, and also with impressive indicators of 0.76 mortality. Cuba has applied more doses of vaccines per capita during the pandemic than any other country.
We are one of 20 countries with over ninety percent of the population completely vaccinated against Covid. And we were just the second country in the world to apply vaccines to pediatric populations two years of age and older. These forms of creative resistance are now being carried over into other areas of the economy and social life, to overcome the blockade with our efforts, talent, and labor.
We are increasingly involving our youth in that effort and offering them greater space for social participation. As a result, young people can see that it is possible to have life goals that coincide with the social project defended by the Revolution. Of course, there are those who migrate, but the majority of young people are in Cuba, working in the areas I’ve mentioned and others. They are the ones leading our scientific development. Young people are involved in the country’s main productive and economic activities. They are the ones who drive the digital transformation of society, the standard-bearers for social, political, and institutional communication. They are the ones that convince us of the need to work for the continuity of the Revolution.
DDG: I want to pick up on two things that you said, Mr. President. One is the cyclical nature of what you call the emigration from Cuba and the way in which that, in your view, responds to harsher sanctions. If I understand your argument, the US imposes harsher sanctions, which sends more people out of the country. Do you feel that that’s something that the Biden administration can do anything about?
MDC: We don’t expect too much to change with the Biden administration. We still have a diplomatic relationship with the United States; there is an American embassy in Cuba and a Cuban embassy in the United States. Relations were reestablished during Obama’s term, which was a completely different policy from the one implemented by Trump which Biden has maintained. I highlight it because, even if it was a Republican president who applied a policy of maximum pressure on Cuba, it is a Democratic president who maintains that policy.
Through direct and indirect channels, we have let the Biden administration know that we are willing to sit down to discuss our problems, including immigration to the US. But that has to be done from a position of equality, respect, and with no strings attached. We have not received any response from the US. Therefore, we do not feel like there is any intention on the part of this administration to work with us.
However, we do aspire to maintain a civilized relationship between the two countries, regardless of our ideological differences. Until that moment comes, we will continue to work to overcome that situation by ourselves. We are working to guarantee that young people are not subject to deception, manipulation, or misrepresentation about what kind of opportunities are available to them. Young people get caught up in a completely disorderly and illegal migratory flow—falling into human trafficking schemes—as they leave Cuba legally, only to become illegal in transit to the United States.
There is a lot of talk about Cuban migration, especially young Cuban migrants, but the fact is that migration affects all countries, and those migrating are generally young, able-bodied people with dreams.
KvH: You see small shops, private hotels, and restaurants in Cuba. How far do you believe you can go with this process within the framework of socialism?
MDC: We aspire to be a socialist economy guaranteeing the greatest possible social justice. We have to build, strengthen, and develop this socialist economy without forgetting the conditions of the world in which we live, which is full of uncertainties and complexities, a world where the gap between rich and poor is widening and where the countries of the South have many disadvantages.
Still, we will never give up on our ideal of socialism. But how do we do that with current conditions being what they are—including with the blockade and problems internal to Cuba? We defend the socialist economy as the way to achieve greater social justice, while we also defend greater efficiency, greater autonomy, and better performance of the socialist state enterprise, that is, the public enterprise within our social economic model.
We have also opened up a private, non-state sector of the economy as a complement to the state sector. On the one hand, there is a single entrepreneurial system, where there is one actor—the state enterprise—which today has the ownership and management of the main means of production; and there is a second non-state actor that also contributes to the development of the country, the national GDP, and absorbs part of the labor force.
Lately, we have witnessed a very interesting development: these non-state enterprises are beginning to link up with the state sector. For example, under blockade conditions, our state enterprises are unable to use their productive capacity to the maximum. However, the non-state sector, which has more possibilities to import despite the blockade, links up with that state entity, and together, they develop productive activities and services that ultimately benefit the people.
We aspire to give the Cuban people the prosperity that they deserve for all the heroism they have shown in resisting the blockade for all these years. How will we do that? With a concept of socialist construction that includes a state sector and a private sector. It is a challenge, but we are going to achieve it.
KvH: I had the good fortune to see former Foreign Minister Alarcón a week before he passed, and what he was most enthralled about were the changes in the region. Just the other day, Lula was in Cuba for a major gathering. The region seems to be moving in a more pink and less right-wing direction. Does that give Cuba more space to make changes or perhaps even recreate the nonaligned movement for a new era? Read More