La Marx International

Millions believe that Cuba is a socialist country, but that belief is no longer supported by any fact of reality. Cuba is a capitalist country, and if there are still honest activists or leaders who believe that Cuba is a socialist country, it is the product of a deception carried out by the oligarchs who lead the current regime that governs Cuba and calls itself "socialist", added to the propaganda of the lying capitalist governments of the world that also claim that Cuba is a "socialist" country, and thirdly, by the leaders of the 99% of the world left who affirm exactly the same lie. ́

The capitalist governments say that Cuba is "socialist" in order to discredit socialism by showing the horrific situation in which the Cuban people live, trying to demonstrate with that example that capitalism is the best social system. Contributing to this confusion is the policy ofthe Castrist regime, which is headed by a party that calls itself "Communist", propagandizes the idea that it carries out "socialism", and uses the figure of the revolutionary Che Guevara.

But the reality is that Cuba has been returning to capitalism for more than 20 years, and in this paper we are going to explain how this whole process took place. Socialism is a system destined to favor the interests of the overwhelming majority of the population, the working class and the people, the humblest, the poor, the most vulnerable. But none of that happens in Cuba, where the poorest and most vulnerable are mercilessly crushed by a small group of oligarchs who have become millionaires.

A sinister and reprehensible blockade of U.S. imperialism against Cuba for 65 years has affected the lives of millions of Cubans, but the best ally of the blockade has been the policy of the Stalinist leaders of the Communist Party of Cuba (CCP) who have systematically refused to develop the Latin American revolution to defeat the imperialist blockade and bring the Cuban people out of isolation. Castroism contributed to the isolation of the Cuban people with its Stalinist strategy of "socialism in one country" following the directives of Moscow Stalinism throughout the 20th century. This strategy, far from building a socialist Cuba, ended up leading Cuba towards capitalism by turning the PCC nomenclature into millionaire capitalists at the expense of the hunger of the people.

In this article we will see how Cuba ceased to be a workers' state and returned to capitalism more than 20 years ago. We will see in depth the business network of PCC officials who have taken over the island's economy, and have turned Cuba into a bourgeois state. The dictatorship has privatized Cuba's economy on the basis of brutal repression with persecution, murders, imprisonment, torture and exile of the people, which has turned the island into a hell of cruel inequality, brutal conditions of exploitation for the working class and subjugation for the population. The new Constitution imposed by the regime in 2019 explicitly promulgates "private ownership of the means of production", abandons the proposal of overcoming the regimes of exploitation of some people over others, and eliminates the phrase in article number 5 of the old Constitution that alluded to "communist society".

GAESA, the business consortium of the oligarchs

Cuba's dictatorship is an oligarchy of military officers who have become millionaire businessmen controlling the country's main capitalist holding company called  Business Management Group Public Limited Company (In Spanish, Grupo de Administración Empresarial Sociedad Anónima ( GAESA) which is in the hands of the Revolutionary Armed Forces (RAF). The RAF controls the Ministry of Defense of the Revolutionary Armed Forces (MINRAF), and GAESA is a conglomerate of holdings of 57 companies that depends on MINRAF, according to the report of the Economic and Commercial Office of the Spanish embassy in La Habana.

GAESA controls the tourism industry with the Gaviota Tourism Group, which owns an important part of Cuba's 4 and 5-star hotels. The group includes the travel agency Gaviota Tours, the Marinas Gaviota Cuba, the car rental agency Transgaviota and the hotel supplies and services company AT Comercial S.A. It has 83 hotel facilities totaling about 29,000 rooms. Gaviota has signed management and marketing agreements with 14 international capitalist chains, including the Four Points Sheraton hotel in Havana, managed by the Starwood chain that was acquired by the U.S. group Marriott.

The annual turnover of the Gaviota Group reaches US$700 million, and in its assets it declared assets of US$4,261 million, a figure that triples the annual health budget in Cuba. In 2023, the government only allocated 1,750 million Cuban pesos to social and health programs, an amount significantly less than that managed by this military conglomerate company. While the oligarchs of the Cuban military nomenclature become millionaires, the shortage of food and medicine affects the entire population, with pharmacies out of stock and constant blackouts.

This social formation in which an oligarchy accumulates millions, and the people do not have access to medicines, the Stalinists, reformists, social democrats, campists, and former guerrillas, they call "socialism". GAESA also controls companies in other branches of production such as Tecnotex and Tecnoimport that are dedicated to imports and exports, the company TRD Caribe that controls foreign exchange sales chains, the company Unión de Construcciones Militares that controls the construction branch, the Almest company that controls the real estate industry, Zdimsa that is the company responsible for the Mariel Integral Development Zone. In addition, GAESA controls the company Almacenes Universales dedicated to port, customs, transport and wholesale services.

Also operating under GAESA's control are the Cimex Corporation, another major conglomerate that encompasses retail stores called Tiendas Panamericanas, controls gas stations called Servi-Cupet, the El Rápido coffee shop network, photo stores called Photoservice, a shipping company called Melfi Marine, a company called Cimex Real Estate and the International Financial Bank, among others.

U.S. imperialism played a fundamental role in the concentration and economic success of GAESA through the policy of "openness" promoted by the Obama Administration, which allowed the development of the tourism sector with an increase in visitors of 15% per year.

Other processes that were underway, such as the renegotiation of the foreign debt with the Paris Club and the conclusion of the Association Agreement with the European Union, also influenced the growth and concentration of the Cuban economy at the hands of GAESA. The "opening" between Cuba and the United States began in the previous work that was carried out with the visit of Elon Musk, owner of SpaceX, Tesla and X, who was in Cuba in January 2013 with the purpose of negotiating the release of Alan Gross, in a delegation headed by actor Sean Penn in which Shervin Pischevar also appeared. investor in Silicon Valley.

An aristocratic oligarchy with hereditary positions

How did GAESA come about? From the very bowels of the nomenclature of the Stalinist Communist Party. The brothers Fidel and Raúl Castro held absolute power over all the resources of the state, and by April 1981 Raúl Castro launched the idea of founding GAESA as the engine of the transition to capitalism, with which he entrusted the task of directing GAESA to Julio Casas Regueiro, who was its financier, and the second in command of the FAR. In turn, he asked Casas Regueiro to instruct his son-in-law, Luis Alberto Rodríguez López-Calleja, in trade, investment, banking, and foreign relations.

Being under the control of MINRAF, GAESA was never audited by the Comptroller General of the Republic, oralways remained unaccountable to any independent state body, as an opaque structure, completely hidden from the people, always surrounded by the most absolute secrecy.

So when Fidel Castro left the presidency due to his advanced age in 2008, he transferred it into the hands of his brother Raul who assumed the presidency of Cuba. Raúl transferred the leadership of the RAF to his trusted man, the head of GAESA Julio Casas Regueiro. At the same time, Raúl Castro's son-in-law, Luis Alberto Rodríguez López-Calleja was appointed as head of GAESA. The nomenclature of the CCP carried outall a distribution of the most important positions of political and economic power of the state based on family and hereditary relations, as if they were princes or members of the nobility.

Raúl Castro's son-in-law, Luis Alberto Rodríguez López-Calleja, was little known outside the circles of the regime, most Cubans did not see him in photographs or the official media, despite being one of the most powerful and influential figures among the members of the high political-military hierarchy. But one of GAESA's most important companies, Nordstrand Maritime & Trading, became owned by Guillermo Faustino López-Callejas, the brother of GAESA's boss. Since Raúl assumed the presidency of Cuba, and his son-in-law the head of GAESA in 2008, a period of expansion of the GAESA holding began that increased its dominance and concentration of Cuba's economy. GAESA absorbed the CIMEX corporation, tripling its size. Subsequently, it absorbed all the assets of the Habaguanex company, located in the old La Habana.

With the help of Odebrecht and financing from the National Development Bank of Brazil, GAESA carried out the expansion and modernization of the port of Mariel, to turn it into the largest container terminal in Cuba, which led to the creation of the Mariel Special Development Zone, in an investment of approximately US$1,000 million.

GAESA pushes Cuba into a crisis with no way out

However, the entire process of concentration fueled by the ambition of the capitalist oligarchy of the Cuban Armed Forces pushed the country towards a crisis with no way out. The nomenclature and the oligarchs of the RAF began to triangulate operations in tax havens with companies such as Nordstrand Maritime & Trading or Acemex that belong to the brother of López-Callejas, president of GAESA. These companies were registered in tax havens such as Liechtenstein or Panama, to evade tax controls and carry out business with companies from the United States.

In fact, the process of concentration that Cuba underwent with the emergence of GAESA replicated on a small scale the process of concentration that the global capitalist economy underwent in the accumulation regime of globalization in which global capitalism was concentrated around Global Corporations. GAESA implied a privatization of Cuba's assets, and a concentration of the country's wealth that took a leap forward when in 2016 the Central Bank of Cuba ceded the International Financial Bank (BFI) to GAESA, from which the process of concentration that GAESA implied was unstoppable and led to the holding controlling 70% of the economy and 95% of the country's finances.

Throughall this brutal process of concentration typical of capitalism, the oligarchy of the RAF, using GAESA, introduced all the scourges of capitalism into the interior of Cuba. As GAESA became larger, took control of the economy, and developed a brutal inequality in Cuba, capital flight, unbridled speculation, drug trafficking, prostitution, human trafficking, all the scourges that characterize any capitalist nation, which also developed unstoppably.

The nomenclature of oligarchs of the Cuban dictatorship followed in the same footsteps of the oligarchies and military dictatorships such as that of Putin, Maduro or Xi Jinping, going on to control all series of illegal businesses and operating in an increasingly mafia-like manner. When the "Panama Papers" scandal broke, it came to light that the law firm Mossack Fonseca, an expert in the creation of imperialist companies for 72 capitalist governments, provided services to 25 Cuban companies to launder money by circumventing the laws of the U.S. embargo.

In turn, the expansion of the tourism industry controlled by GAESA with enormous profits from economic agreements with hotel chains led tothe flourishing of prostitution which, as in all capitalist countries, is intimately linked to the tourism industry. The cruel situation of women in Cuba was aggravated by brutal conditions of brutal machismo and oppression, and appalling levels of degradation through the prostitution of Cuban women in search of sustenance. The so-called "jineteras", the women who prostitute themselves in Cuba for tourists in search of dollars, as well as the flourishing of "jineterismo", have become one of the main economic activities, and suppliers of dollars to Cuban families, based on the industry of "sex tourism".

Also linked to the tourism industry under GAESA's control, other scourges of capitalism have developed, such as the purchase and trafficking of women and children, as well as drug trafficking and the sale of narcotics. But to the extent that GAESA appropriated control of money, and especially of the dollar, masses of capital left the country in investments and capital flight, which definanced the Cuban state. 

The outflow of capital left the Central Bank without foreign currency, and in turn,to the extent that the state was defunded, investments in health, education, subsidies plummeted and the government could not subsidize the Cuban convertible peso, which triggered inflation that began to hit the population mercilessly.

The Central Bank of Cuba, already without sufficient funds to sustain the value of the peso, could not face the debts, which opened a crisis more serious than that of the "special period" of the 90's, in which Cuba stopped receiving subsidies due to the implosion and disappearance of the Soviet Union. After the death of Luis Alberto Rodríguez López-Calleja in 2022, the presidency of GAESA fell to the first colonel of the cuban Army, Ania Lastres Morera,

A revolution against the dictatorship and GAESA

The expansion of GAESA from 2016, and the consolidation of the privatization of companies and sectors of the economy, opened an economic and social crisis of extreme gravity. The shortage of basic foodstuffs, medicines, and fuel skyrocketed, uncontrolled inflation exploded, and a financial crisis with a dollarization of the economy based on convertible pesos into dollars. The crisis hit the country's infrastructure leading to frequent blackouts and energy crises. The situation generated enormous social discontent, and an unprecedented migratory wave that forced the dictatorship to present an economic plan called "Economic Ordering Task", which was presented by President Díaz-Canel on January 1, 2021.

The Task of Economic Ordering was a brutal austerity plan against the people, similar to all the justice plans of capitalist governments. It included a strong devaluation of the Cuban peso, a reduction in wages, an end to subsidies and gratuities to grandparents' homes, nursing homes, necrological services, semi-boarding schools, children's centers, food, medicines, electricity, gas, services of ETECSA, the telecommunications and transport company. A brutal attack on the poorest, most vulnerable and helpless sectors of the people in favor of the business circle of oligarchs who dominate GAESA.

But along with the skyrocketing crisis, the revolution of the Cuban people also exploded, who began to go out to fight against the capitalist dictatorship. The application of the brutal plan, and the worsening of the living conditions of the population, provoked two reactions in the people: On the one hand, a wave of flight into exile of thousands of Cubans between 2020 and 2023, with more than 850,000 Cubans who emigrated in search of better opportunities. On the other hand, the people's revolution against the dictatorship broke out and the uprisings and struggles against the dictatorship began, which grew from 2021 onwards. In July 2021, the first uprising of the people in years was unleashed, among the most massive mobilizations in the history of Cuba that took place over 3 days, whose development you can read by clicking here.

From 2021 onwards, the protests were in crescendo: During 2022, more than 3,400 protests were registered in the country, while during 2023 the protests rose to 5,749 and during 2024 they rose to 8,443 per year. This growth reflects the population's discontent with the dictatorship in the face of the growth of poverty, misery, and social inequality, in a context of growth of the crisis in which the privatization that GAESA means for the capitalist economy of Cuba has immersed the country. The revolution, despite the fact that millions of Cubans and workers around the world believe that it is against "socialism," is actually going against a capitalist dictatorship.

The privatization of Cuba under Stalinism

The people confront the dictatorship with the mobilizations and also expressing their discontent with all kinds of actions, among them there is a silent "citizen financial rebellion" against GAESA when thousands of Cubans decided not to send or receive more remittances in dollars in GAESA's financial institutions. Almost 95% of the flow of remittances to the island is being channeled through a network of more than 150 "informal banks", with which GAESA went from controlling US$1,972 million to only US$81.6 million, a real collapse for GAESA becauseit represents only 4.13% of the total volume of the remittance market that it controlled.

This phenomenon was a severe blow to the finances of the capitalist oligarchy in power, since remittances were one of its most important sources of foreign exchange. Fordecades, GAESA controlled remittances through entities such as FINCIMEX S.A. and American International Services S.A. (AIS). Later, he established ORBIT S.A. to make it appear as an independent company, but the people detected this maneuver of the dictatorship and expressed their rebellion by omitting to deposit and receive money in it.

In this way, the withdrawals of money from GAESA companies made by the people broke the monopoly of remittances that the oligarchy had. The dictatorship believed that the exile of more than 850,000 Cubans would result in an increase in the volume of remittances, but it had the opposite effect, because most of these migrants prioritized family reunification and their own economic challenges abroad, thus limiting their ability to send money to their relatives in Cuba.

However, along with the growth of protests and demonstrations against the regime, the numbers of political prisoners also grew due to the brutal repression of the Díaz- Canel dictatorship against the people. The current number of political prisoners in Cuba is 1,148, according to the Prisoners Defenders report in November 2024, a number that rises day by day as the people confront the dictatorship and the regime's massive repression. The reality is that the dictatorship of the Communist Cuban Party (CCP) has erased all the conquests that the people achieved with the Cuban revolution of 1959.

Castroism is the political current that has been in charge of erasing these conquests in the service of becoming a business class of millionaires. The dictatorship of the CCP prohibits having union activity outside the official state unions that respond to the PCC, prohibits having any other political or social organization that is not the CCP, or its related organizations, and imposes the crushing of the most elementary democratic freedoms, with thousands of political prisoners who suffer aberrant conditions and a whole systematic methodology of disappearances, torture and robbery of the victims.

Castroism and Stalinism led Cuba to capitalism

It was Castroism and Stalinism who imposed a totalitarian regime against the cuban people, which led Cuba towards an economic crisis, with no way out, as Nahuel Moreno explains: "The crisis of the Cuban economy, whose immediate reason seems to be the lack of development of the Cuban economy, production, obeys a fundamental reason: the bureaucratic management of the economy and society Cuban. This bureaucratic leadership is manifested in the lack of workers' democracy to discuss the preparation of economic plans, to apply them and for their critical evaluation. Fidel solves everything and his team. This totalitarian leadership has led to economic disaster. The same disaster and for the the same cause as all other totalitarian bureaucratic states" (Nahuel Moreno- Why does Fidel negotiate in secret with Reagan?- 1982)

At the beginning of the Cuban revolution against the Batista regime, Fidel Castro's leadership and the July 26 Movement were not socialist or communist, but were a conservative leadership, Fidel Castro led a formation that represented the old oligarchy of the interior as Nahuel Moreno explains: "... the Batista regime relied more and more on the bourgeoisie of La Habana (industrialists, smugglers, hotel and cabaret owners) as opposed to the big sugar and landowning bourgeoisie settled in the interior ... (Nahuel Moreno - The Latin American Revolution - 1962) 

Fidel Castro's guerrilla movement was weak with a little more than a hundred soldiers. What triggered the revolution was the uprising and protest of the urban middle class and the peasantry in 1958 provoked by the economic crisis as Nahuel Moreno explains: "... It is important to point out that a large part of the masses who joined the anti-Batista movement created their own independent guerrillas. It is generally ignored that Batista fell due to the action of several guerrilla fronts that Castro only managed to coordinate at the last minute. While Fidel in Las Villas had only 150 men, the Revolutionary Directorate had a thousand guerrillas, and the Second Front of Escambray, five thousand..." (Idem- Nahuel Moreno)

What had Stalinism done when the Cuban Revolution took place in 1959? He had supported the Batista dictatorship. Faithful to the treaties of Yalta and Potsdam signed by Stalin with US imperialism, he was forced to accept the Yalta and Potsdam treaties. In the U.S., the CCP was dedicated to supporting imperialist governments and in 1943 placed 2 ministers in the Batista government. After the mass insurrection that liquidated the Batista dictatorship, Fidel Castro formed a government by placing the oligarch Manuel Urrutia Lleó as provisional President of the Republic of Cuba and his government was recognized by the United States. Through this move, Castro sought the approval of Urrutia from the U.S. government, seeking to reach an agreement with the U.S. But the clashes with Urrutia made an agreement impossible, which opened a crisis and they had to remove him from the government.

This is how Nahuel Moreno explains it: "... The president of Cuba is the greatest bourgeois in Cuba... it is Urrutia ... He is the man of imperialism... The limited stage between the defeat of Batista and the fall of President Urrutia is characterized by the offensive of the bourgeoisie which, having supported Castro, tries to stop the revolution..." (Idem- Nahuel Moreno) But imperialism began to exert brutal pressure on Cuba to prevent the development of the revolution by all means, trying to stop it so that it does not spread to all of Latin America or impact the United States, whichforced Castroism to take measures to defend itself from imperialist pressures.

This is how Nahuel Moreno explains it: "While the entire bourgeoisie is aligned against Castro, the government, pressured by the labor movement and the international situation, adopts a series of progressive measures: they officially establish armed militias, agrarian reform is deepened, it decisively confronts Yankee imperialism" (Idem-Nahuel Moreno). "In mid-1959, the Fidelista government carried out the first agrarian reform. In February 1960 he sold sugar to the USSR for the first time, paying 20% in foreign currency and the rest in oil. When the oil arrived, in June 1960, the American refineries refused to process it. They are requisitioned and the United States lowers the sugar quota to 700,000 tons. Fidel reacted to this outrage by imperialism by nationalizing the oil refineries at the end of June" (Nahuel Moreno - Why Fidel Negotiated in Secret with Reagan?- 1982)

This is how Nahuel Moreno goes on to explain: "... The United States lowers the sugar quota again. Castro, then, nationalizes all the sugar mills, banks and electricity companies... The United States responds in October by embargoing Cuba and initiating the blockade ... all these revolutionary measures will be the ones that will transform Cuba into the first workers' state in America and the West. The expropriation of the bourgeoisie and imperialism will allow the Cuban workers and the Castro government to overcome the problems of health and illiteracy. Cuba has won first place in Latin America in that respect... In 1961 Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, who is the one who commands the economy, set a five-year industrial development plan, until 1965, which was interrupted in 1963 ... In 1963, the economy was in a critical situation as a result of the fall in sugar prices, disorganization and the imperialist blockade. Because of this, the plan is interrupted without any prior discussion, nor democratic consultation with the working class and the people" (Idem- Nahuel Moreno)

The Cuban Revolution of January 1, 1959, led by Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, gave rise to the first workers' state in the history of Latin America. The pressure of U.S. imperialism forced revolutionary measures such asthe nationalization of the economy, and the expropriation of capital, all of which allowed an enormous advance of the Cuban people in terms of work, health, education, eradicated infant mortality, and became a beacon and example to continue enjoying the sympathy of millions of workers and poor in Latin America and the world. But Fidel Castro, instead of confronting the blockade by placing as the axis of his strategy the promotion of the mobilization of the people of Cuba and of the whole world, decided to prioritize as a strategy to go towards an agreement with Stalinism, which is why he visitedthe USSR between April 27 and June 2, 1963. and reached an agreement with the regime headed by Nikita Khrushchev.

All these decisions taken by the Castro regime were carried out without any prior discussion, or democratic consultation with the working class and the people. The agreement implied the economic support of the USSR in exchange for Castroism adopting the Stalinist strategy of "Socialism in one country", and integrating itself into the world Stalinist apparatus under the aegis of Moscow. It was right for the Castro regime to seek an agreement with another regime that would help Cuba economically, but it was a betrayal of the revolution to adopt the Stalinist strategy that included the imposition of a totalitarian regime, condemned Cuba to monoculture and Cuba's economic dependence on the USSR which led to a crisis, as Nahuel Moreno explains: "From 1963 to 1972 a new development strategy was developed, in the face of the failure of the previous policy: return to sugar monoculture as under Batista. This new economic policy it is also adopted bureaucratically, without consultation and discussion with the labor movement ... coincides with the commitment of the USSR to buy significant quantities of sugar at a fixed price" (Idem- Nahuel Moreno)

The adoption of the Stalinist strategy left Cuba vulnerable and weak in the face of the blockade because it refused to confront it with the most effective tool that exists for the defense of any state that wants to embark on a socialist course: the extension of the revolution to all of Latin America. This strategy brought as a consequence, in the first place, the crisis of Fidel Castro with Che Guevara, which led to Che not being present at the Conference of Latin American Communist Parties in Havana in 1964. 

The following year, at the Algiers conference of February 25, 1965, Guevara denounced the Stalinist governments that claimed to be socialist, including China, that none of these governments were committing themselves to the different revolutionary processes worldwide, and denounced that the Stalinist governments were selling industrial products at the price of the international market. reproducing imperialist unequal exchange.

On October 3, 1965, the CCP held its founding congress, despite the fact that the PCC already existed, but Castroism carried out a "refoundation" in which the Castro leadership was fully integrated into the world Stalinist apparatus. In the leadership of the "new" CCP, the old leading cadres were removed, Che Guevara was removed, and a new leadership dominated by Castroism was placed. At that founding congress the people of Cuba learned that Che Guevara was no longer part of the government when Fidel Castro read the famous "Farewell Letter," signed by Che Guevara. "Che" was an internationalist, he did not believe in the theory of socialism in a single country, and he broke with Castro and the CCP, raising the slogan: "Create two, three, many Vietnams!"

Consistent with his vision, Che left his positions in the Cuban government, and although he did not carry out a public polemic with Castro, he went to carry out a strategy opposed to that of Castroism. As a result of his mistaken conception, guerrilla, and betrayed by the Communist Party, "Che" died abandoned in Bolivia in 1967 and thus became the first victim of the strategy of "socialism in one country". But the whole policy of alignment with Stalinism pushed Cuba into a brutal economic crisis as Nahuel Moreno explains: "... a consequence of the close economic ties established with the USSR, which obliges Castro to unconditionally submit to the laws of the world market; that market requires Cuba to produce sugar primarily and Castro orders the production of only sugar. Taking into account the world market is necessary; to adapt completely to it is to capitulate to the imperialist domination, just what Castro does. This is how the economic slogan of to achieve a harvest for the year 1970 of ten million tons ... This plan fails miserably since the set objective was not even close to being reached..." (Idem- Nahuel Moreno)

The failure led Castroism to despair, and to the deepening of its agreements with Moscow's Stalinism, so in 1972 Cuba joined the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA), an economic cooperation organization formed around Moscow. This had disastrous consequences for the Cuban revolution, as Nahuel Moreno explains: "... In 1972, Cuba joined CMEA ... It is linked like this closely to the world submarket controlled by the Stalinist bureaucracy... entry into CMEA reinforces the tendency towards monoculture or specialization with reference to the world market ... Cuba is obliged to import 75% of its cereals, 68% of its steel and practically 100% of the cotton she uses... From the 1970s onwards, there was a colossal recovery of the Cuban economy, which was not due to the ... entry into CMEA and the intensification of the monoculture, but because there was a spectacular increase in the international price of sugar, which began to to fall in the middle of the same decade. Since the fall in sugar prices, the Cuban economy enters an acute crisis." (idem- Nahuel Moreno) 

Beyond the fact that Moscow's Stalinism gave great help to the Castro economy by buying sugar at 40 cents a pound, several times higher than the world price, the isolation resulting from the refusal to promote the American revolution left Cuba dependent and condemned to monoculture.

The betrayal of the Central American revolution led Cuba to capitalism

Cuba could have broken its isolation in the 70's when the revolution triumphed in Nicaragua. With the revolutions in Nicaragua and El Salvador, imperialism suffered a serious defeat that opened the doors of the Latin American socialist revolution, but Fidel Castro and the Cuban regime that led the Central American revolution put forward the doctrine that "Nicaragua will not be a new Cuba" making it clear that the position of the Cuban state was not to extend the socialist revolution to Central America. In El Salvador, almost a third of the territory fell into the hands of the revolutionaries and the masses, but the CP led to the assassination of Cayetano Carpio, who represented the most radical wing of the Farabundo Martí Front. In this way, by limiting the Nicaraguan revolution to the imposition of a bourgeois state, and leaving the revolution in El Salvador isolated, Castroism isolated the Cuban revolution again.

The isolation strengthened the blockade of imperialism, and led to a setback of the revolution that opened the dynamic that allowed the CCP elite to become a new bourgeoisie just as happened in China, in the USSR, in Vietnam and in all the states where the revolution had begun, but suffered the brake of Stalinism. Trotsky's prognosis in the 1937 Revolution Betrayed was thus confirmed: "An indefinite isolation would infallibly bring about, not the establishment of a national communism, but the restoration of capitalism." For Marxism, Socialism is an international project, "Socialism in a single country" cannot be built. And as Trotsky said, if the revolution does not advance on the international terrain, it regresses to capitalism.

In parallel to the betrayal of the Central American revolution, Castroism imposed the first five-year plan of the period on the economic terrain 1976-80 in which they introduced changes towards capitalism that were inspired by the economic reforms that were had been carried out in the countries of Eastern Europe, as Nahuel Moreno explains: "The tremendous failure of the 10 million ton harvest of 1970 ... led the Castro leadership to adopt orientations of the post-bureaucracy Stalinist. These new orientations, theorized by Soviet economists, of whom the best known was Liberman, tended to decentralize economic management by giving autonomy to companies, introducing the economic calculation by establishment and applying the commercial laws ... the financial, productive and commercial autonomy of companies" (idem- Nahuel Moreno)

At the same time, while the totalitarian regime of the Castros encouraged reforms in favor of introducing capitalism into the economy, it increased dependence on imperialism by taking foreign debt from imperialist commercial banks for more than $1.9 billion, most of which had a good maturity of near the end of the country, part of which was with French and Canadian banks. By 1979 the issuance of convertible bonds was withdrawal when Swiss financial newspapers questioned Cuban credit and a consortium of banks The French and Germans refused this time to prepare a financial package. Business Week remembered the 20th of January 1980 that Raúl Castro drew a more grim: "Cuba is facing the specter of economic disaster and bankruptcy." The current production of had fallen to 5.5 million tons, well below the 7 million that were produced in the years prior to Castro's rise to power.

Faced with the crisis, in 1980 Fidel Castro's regime imposed new reforms. These are synthesized in two sets of measures: On the one hand, an increase in the exploitation of workers, and an expansion of capitalist market measures, as Nahuel Moreno explains: "The factory managers offer guarantees to those who do exemplary work; the wages paid by the state farms are tied to global production and not to the time workers remain in the fields; The performance of the individual work is evaluated. Those who perform below average they are degraded or thrown out; Service industry workers can now look for a second employment in private enterprise ... More than 200 markets have been opened where the farmers can sell their surplus production above the quotas set by the state ... The free market will make a wide-ranging contribution to Cuban socialism... After all, this is very similar to what is being done in the Soviet Union and in Hungary." (idem- Nahuel Moreno)

To the extent that capitalist reforms were introduced, totalitarian reforms were introduced into the country's political regime, as Nahuel Moreno explains: "The other side of this economic change was the political changes that took place between 1979 and 1979. 1980 at the top of the Cuban government and to a lesser degree in the CCP. O Estado de Sao Paulo commented that "The first is that power was again centralized in the hands of a small group... three ministers were replaced in December 1979. A month later, eleven ministers were removed and nine more left the council of ministers because their departments were included in others. Nine, of those 23, were members of the central committee of the party and six of them were separated from the CC at the second congress of the CCP in December 1980 (...) This centralization is also illustrated by the fact that 78.7% of the The members of the Central Committee elected at the first party congress in 1975 were re- elected at the second congress, in 1980, despite the fact that the number of members of the committee had been increased from 112 to 148". (idem- Nahuel Moreno)

The goal of this centralization mirrors the Castro bureaucracy's attempt to control the forces of the U.S. government. bourgeois and petty bourgeoisie encouraged by the opening and development of the capitalist market. How That control is always bureaucratic, without the democratic mobilization of the working class. Everything is resolved in the offices of the Castro brothers. At the end of the Five-Year Plan, at the beginning of the 80's, Raúl Castro proposed the formation of GAESA. This is how the revolution was betrayed by Fidel Castro and the Stalinist leaders, who carried out the process of restoring capitalism in Cuba.

The development of this process that we have analyzed led to the founding of GAESA in the 80's promoted by Raúl Castro, whose domination over the country's economy was possible by imposing a dictatorship that persecuted, tortured, and murdered thousands of activists and labor and popular leaders, crushing the rights of minorities, women, blacks, etc. and the LGTBQ community. Even when Chavismo emerged in Venezuela in the 1990s, Castro personally attended Chávez's inauguration to state that Venezuela should not follow Cuba's path, in a speech given at the University of Caracas.

99% of the world left lies when they claim that the Cuban state is a workers' state, or in a process of restoration towards capitalism, and breaks with Marxism by abandoning class analysis. What defines whether a state is socialist or capitalist is what social class the state works for; If it is worker or socialist, it is a state that goes against capital and the exploitation of human beings for human beings, defending the rights of workers and the people. 

But whether it is a bourgeois or capitalist state, what the state stands for is the exploitation of the workers and the people in favor of capital, no matter what the party that runs the state is called. The current Cuban state defends the interests of a minority of millionaire oligarchs, the leadership of the army and the CCP and attacks the interests of the workers and the people, therefore it is a capitalist state. Those who maintain that Cuba is a workers' state based on analyzing how much state property, and how much private property exists in the social formation, carry out a bourgeois-Keynesian, syndicalist analysis, alien to Marxism because it loses sight of the class analysis

While Cuba was a workers' state, the country's one-party Stalinist regime was a bureaucratic Bonapartist regime. But when Cuba became a capitalist state, the political regime was transformed into a capitalist dictatorship, which massacres, tortures, and crushes the freedoms of the people in defense of capital, and the profits of GAESA and the companies. This capitalist dictatorship is what the Cuban people are now facing in a revolution against the totalitarian regime that implies the struggle for democratic freedoms, for the freedom of political prisoners, for freedom of association, of mobilization, of the press, until the capitalist dictatorship of the PCC oligarchy is overthrown.

From La Marx International we unconditionally support the struggle of the people of Cuba against the capitalist dictatorship of the CCP. We call on all activists around the world to support this revolution, and to unite with all activists fighting against the dictatorship, even together with those honest and confused comrades who believe they are fighting against "socialism". Reality will show all Cuban and world activism that they are facing a capitalist dictatorship, against all the lies, we know that they will open their eyes and understand what the correct slogans of the program are. ¡We are for the socialist Cuba! But the struggle for a socialist Cuba passes first of all through the defeat of the capitalist dictatorship headed by the government of Díaz Canel and the CCP, on the path of Latin American and the world revolution.