Havana/After almost twenty pages describing a country ruined by authoritarianism, repression, inefficiency and decades of disastrous economic decisions, the Harvard Working Group on the Future of Cuba reaches a conclusion that will make more than one uncomfortable: to get out of the hole it will also be necessary to count on those who currently govern the Island.
That is probably the most provocative idea of a text thatfor the most part, covers a landscape familiar to any Cuban: blackouts, hunger, exodus, hospitals without resources, schools without teachers and cities in ruins. But the group – made up, among others, of Tania Bruguera, Manuel Cuesta Morúa, Omar Everleny, Rafael Rojas, Julio Antonio Fernández Estrada and former US diplomat Jeffrey DeLaurentis – tries to go beyond the diagnosis and draws a concrete political sequence.
The first step would be a general and unconditional amnesty for political prisoners. Next, Havana should decriminalize forms of protest and expression protected even by the current Constitution, repeal decree laws 349, 370 and 35 and eliminate extralegal practices such as that of the “regulated”, citizens who are prevented from leaving or returning to the country by administrative decision.
Later, a new Constituent Assembly would arrive, in charge of laying the foundations for a democratic and plural system and a “social market economy” with different forms of property, including private property.
Washington, according to the scheme, would then have to respond “immediately, positively and forcefully,” starting by eliminating sanctions that affect fuel supplies and providing resources to stabilize the economy. Later, a new Constituent Assembly would arrive, in charge of laying the foundations for a democratic and plural system and a “social market economy” with different forms of property, including private property.
The approach has an obvious controversial side. It starts from the premise that those who have closed off any possibility of alternation for decades can now become agents of opening, in the Delcy Rodríguez style. The report recognizes, at the same time, that repression has imprisoned, expelled or pushed into exile a good part of the actors who could have functioned as interlocutors of a transition. “The emptying of the Island is not only demographic,” he concludes after describing a weakened independent civil society and an insufficiently articulated opposition.
The document questions the extreme opacity of the current talks between Cuba and the United States and points out the participation of figures who appear as representatives of the country without holding clear government functions. He expressly mentions Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, grandson of Raúl Castro, whom he remembers does not hold any known official position and whom he links to Gaesa. The military conglomerate is described as a “State within the State”, with accounts far removed from public scrutiny and the effective control of the National Assembly.
It also proposes mobilizing private philanthropy to support hospitals, universities, schools, museums and libraries.
The report does not save the Government from responsibilities either. He attributes economic bankruptcy to decades of inefficiency, bad policies and misguided investments. Between 2014 and 2024, tourism received between 25% and 50% of the country’s total investment. In 2024 alone, tourism investment was 14 times greater than agricultural investment and 11 times greater than that allocated to health, social assistance and education, despite the fact that hotel occupancy barely reached 23%.
It also proposes measures such as joining the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the IDB and the CAF, liberalization of the land regime, diaspora investment, transparent resolution of claims for confiscated properties and even the repeal of the Helms-Burton Act. It also proposes mobilizing private philanthropy to support hospitals, universities, schools, museums and libraries.
The report drops the academic language and calls Trump’s policies “explicitly imperial”
The document seeks to maintain an uncomfortable balance between Havana and Washington. He blames the Cuban system for the structural crisis, but maintains that US sanctions have considerably aggravated their effects on the population. He even calls it a “contradiction” that the United States offers up to $100 million in humanitarian aid while applying measures that, according to their authors, contribute to the emergency it seeks to alleviate.
It is precisely when talking about Donald Trump where this commitment to equidistance loses its measure at times. The report abandons academic language and describes his Administration’s policies as “explicitly imperial.” The harshness contrasts with the much more clinical tone used when describing six decades of authoritarianism in Cuba.
Even so, this contradiction does not diminish the interest of the central proposal. Compared to the usual reports that list calamities and end where they began, this one puts on the table a much more uncomfortable question: if Cuba needs a transition, can it be done against those who still control all the resources of the State or will it have to be done, at least at the beginning, also with them?
