(Shorthand Versions – Presidency of the Republic)

Miguel M. Díaz-Canel: Good evening, Arleen.

Arleen Rodríguez: Thank you for accepting our invitation.

Miguel M. Díaz-Canel: Thank you for being here.

Arleen Rodríguez: Our Presidential team is here.

Miguel M. Díaz-Canel: Greetings to all.

Arleen Rodríguez: It’s late at night here at the Palace of the Revolution. Are all days this long?

Miguel M. Díaz-Canel: Every day, there are longer days and there are shorter days, but I have a full agenda every day.

Arleen Rodríguez: I have had the opportunity to take part in your agenda sometimes and to me, it seems to be a little tight, isn’t it abusing too much of your energy?

Miguel M. Díaz-Canel: Arleen, we are talking about time, about temporality at work, which is a very important variable in the life of a revolutionary. Times are complex, there is a lot of news coming out in this world full of uncertainty and we do not live in a bubble. That is, we are constantly following what is happening in the country and what is happening in the world, and how global problems also influence our realities.

In these conditions it is not possible to have an empty agenda. There is a full agenda and I would say it is a demanding agenda because there is a lot to do. I do not consider the agenda to be overloaded; it is full and I have gotten used to work with it in all these years. This agenda specially responds to a planning concept that systematizes the moments of work in a way that allows me, in the course of a month and through different forms of action and participation, to tend to each of the pressing problems of the country.

 

Arleen Rodríguez: That is to say, do you design your agenda yourself?

Miguel M. Díaz-Canel: I design it myself, I plan it myself.

Arleen Rodríguez: How do you do it?

Miguel M. Díaz-Canel: I would say I already have a traditional agenda, a work system I came up with many years ago, when I started working for the Party, and I have been adjusting it it to the different responsibilities I have held. In it I prioritize the visits I am going to make to the provinces, the ones I am going to make to be in contact with the people, and then I schedule a group of meetings.

People talk about a meeting bad habit, but there are things for which it is necessary to meet. The excess of meetings is the bad thing, but there are things in which the people involved in an issue have to sit down to analyze it, to analyze the progress, to project what to do in this issue, to work together sitting around a the table, otherwise everything is improvised. There are other spaces in which I am interested in reaching a certain group, a certain place to see things in the scenarios where they are lived. There are things one plans daily, there are things one plans weekly, there are other things that one plans every ten days, every two weeks and monthly, and it is possible thanks to this work system.

I have always thought that a work that is so systematic has to accumulate results and has to accumulate quantitative and qualitative values, and there have to be results.

I believe that there is nothing better than daily work, but I do not believe that these are times to have an unloaded agenda or an easy agenda. It takes energy and as long as I have the energy to do it, I will do it that way.   That energy lies first in the challenge ahead and in how one feels challenged by it; and also the energy comes from the commitment and the will to face the problems and to give an answer that really leads us, as a country and as a people, to a better situation than the one we are currently living. This is why I make the most of every minute of my work.

In this planning I also have to have space for my personal life. I do not believe that a revolutionary can deny the need to have time to share with his wife, children, grandchildren, grandmothers at home, with the family and with close friends who are part of the family, that completes the life of a revolutionary.

Arleen Rodríguez: In any case, we are living in very difficult times. There are many people who tell me: “The President looks exhausted, he looks tired,” because they see him with dark circles under his eyes, or sweating in the middle of a neighborhood in Havana or in a province, or in his home province, for example. There are others who tell you: “He has bad luck, he has gone through everything bad that has happened: a tornado, a plane crash, the fire at the Supertanker Base.” And I ask: Does Díaz-Canel think he has bad luck?

Miguel M. Díaz-Canel: I think that those who talk about luck have to take into consideration the world we are living in, and more than anything else we should say: this era is bad luck! It is a time so turbulent, a time when the world is coming out of a pandemic that caused the loss of so many lives. When we all aspired, at least those of us who have a humanist way of thinking, that the world was going to be a world with more solidarity, more cooperation, more peace and more work for the benefit of the people, instead it is a world that has become embroiled in wars, in conflicts, where unilateral coercive measures are increasing to pressure those who think differently, where walls, and not bridges, are built, where the causes of the poorest countries are constantly targeted to be crushed; a world that is increasingly unequal, the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, the poor have less access to development, so living in these times is really bad luck!

But I believe luck is not the problem, even if it may be associated with misfortunes or adversities. The problem is how you face that adversity or that misfortune or those extreme or complex situations.

In Cuba, we have historically developed a way to face challenges, we do face the challenge! And proof of that is Fidel and Raúl and their generation, the generation that made the Revolution: they attacked the Moncada barracks, they were taken prisoners, a prison that they described as a fruitful time for them. Look at what a lofty concept of facing challenges: the fruitful prison! In prison they studied, in prison they prepared themselves, in prison they grew as people.

Arleen Rodríguez: They did not see it as a misfortune.

Miguel M. Díaz-Canel: They did not see it that way.

The voyage and landing of Granma with all its vicissitudes and difficulties; the battle of Alegría de Pío and the meeting in Cinco Palmas, when the few remaining voyagers finally met, Fidel said: “Now we have won the war!” He defied adversity.

Later, in the years of the Revolution, especially in the early years, there were the events of the blowing upexplosion of the French freighter La Coubre, the invasion of Playa Giron, the Escambray mountains and other mountains where the gangs of enemies of the Revolution roamed and murdered peasants and committed misdeeds; the rupture in the early years with the United States and the beginning of the blockade; the October Crisis, which put the world on the brink of a world war; hurricane Flora which hit the country in the early years of the Revolution, when we did not have the current levels of organization our Civil Defense system and our risk and disaster reduction system have, which also caused material losses and the loss of many human lives.

If Fidel would have thought he had bad luck while living those moments in the early years of a thriving Revolution, the Revolution would not have lasted as it has until these days. Especially with all the things the Revolution has gone through in all its years; we lived a Special Period once and we are living a very complex situation right now.

So I do believe in the possibility of turning setbacks into victories, which is also a way of overcoming adversity, of overcoming challenges, and that is in our history, it is in Cuban history, it is in a history I believe in, in a history that has been built, that has been written by a people determined to make their dreams come true, that has never given up on making their dreams come true. And it is so engaging and encouraging to face it, Arleen.

Sometimes people say to me: “You look serene in the middle of this complex situation.” Actually, I’m boiling inside. Besides, there is also a lot of feelings running underneath, there is a lot of anguish when I am faced with these problems; but I have to draw strength and also has to transmit this strength to the rest of the comrades I work with, and to the people. And then this decision not to give up, not giving room to defeat comes. These convictions are deeply rooted in my life, in my way of being and in my way of thinking.

Arleen Rodríguez: I have heard you say that you are fueled by history, by the counrty and by the people. Do you feel how that energy floods you? Honestly, because we are from the same generation, and I have said: the day is too short…, it can’t be, I can’t do so much, and I get done, let’s say, half of the stuff I want to do, I can’t always keep up with the rhythm you are carrying, and that is when the question that seems rehearsed pops in, that is when anyone can say: “You know each other.” Yes, we have known each other for many years, but the closeness in age makes me feel that I can’t keep up sometimes. I mean, it’s a schedule where there’s no room for a change of program.

In fact, we are doing this interview at this hour because you told us: “When I finish my agenda for the day.” Today you had important meetings in your agenda.

Now I want to talk about the critics, about those who say that it is not bad luck, but bad administration of the country: those who said that the Restructuring was done at the wrong time; it is a good measure, but the timing was not the right one. Or the bankarization, which is aso an excellent measure executed at the wrong time.

How would you respond to them?

Miguel M. Díaz-Canel: They all have the right to criticize. Moreover, I believe that there is no perfect work. It would be ideal to think that everything has been done well, that everything is perfect and that we are right in everything.

We are living in a situation of maximum pressure. They have put us in a situation of maximum pressure, of economic asphyxiation to provoke the collapse of the Revolution, to fracture the unity between the leadership and the people, to obliterate the work of the Revolution. This is expressed in the financial persecution, in the intensification of the blockade, in the enormous, ongoing campaign of subversion. It has recently come to light, you have talked about it in your podcast Chapeando bajito, the amounts of money USAID and NED has given to other countries, and in particular to Cuba, and a denigrating communication strategy, full of hatred to discredit the Revolution and discredit everything we do.

Now, I say: in circumstances as difficult as these we were talking about, it is impossible to find the perfect time. What is the perfect time, and the perfect time of waiting? What is the perfect measure?

Let us remember, sometimes our memory fails, we were living in of blockade until the first semester of 2019, and we were living with other shortages we do not have today; with complex situations, but with other shortages, the economy function in a very different way to how it works now.

All this began to change in the second half of 2019, when Trump tightens the blockade with 243 measures. Then, at the beginning of January 2021, with only a few days left at the White House, he includes us in a spurious list of countries that supposedly sponsor terrorism and that completely cuts off all other forms of financing that we could have, and there is a huge financial and energy persecution.

Biden comes along and maintains those measures and that same intensification.

The pandemic came and affected the whole world and caused it to collapse. It has lasted three years, and the world has not yet recovered from the pandemic, we have not yet recovered from the effects of the pandemic either. The times were aready complicated, regardless of whether we had applied meassures or not.

Our main sources of income were affected: remittances, tourism, exports. We ceased to have financing to repair the electric power plants, to buy the oil and food we needed, to buy the raw materials and inputs needed by a group of productions to provide goods and services to the population, we lacked the money to buy the raw materials to produce essential medicines.

So, there were two alternatives: surrender or fight. Surrender meant applying shock formulas, neoliberal policies and leaving every man or woman for themselves. Fighting meant prioritizing human life, and after we won with the lives of the people, we would continue working to move the country forward.

The fight for people’s lives in COVID-19, did we win it or not? I think we won; we won in a praiseworthy way, the people, our health system, the cooperation of the whole world, human solidarity and our scientists with their vaccines won in a meritorious way.

Imagine this country, and sometimes I wonder what would have happened if we had not had the vaccines in time, if we would have been in that situation and if we would have lived through the fire in the Supertankers Base, the gas explosion in the Saratoga Hotel, intense rains, floods and cyclones, as it has happened all this time? The country was saved by the strategy to face the pandemic. That is the origin of the concept of creative resistance, which is not only to resist and endure, but to resist and to overcome situations, to overcome adversities and to advance as well with your talent, with your effort; with the effort of the people.

How many countries in the world were able to develop their vaccines like we did? How many underdeveloped countries were able to develop vaccines? How many were able to control the disease through their protocols and their own medicines? I believe that Cuba taught us a lesson in this regard and, moreover, we taught it by sharing it with the world, by expressing solidarity with the world.

In the midst of this situation, we applied a measure such as the Restructuring, but the Restructuring was expected and there was a group working on it ten years ago. The Restructuring could not even be developed in the most propitious conditions. Now, is the inflation today really due to caused by the Restructuring? I think this is a subject to be discussed. I am not going to say whether more or less, but without the Restructuring there would have been inflation nonetheless.

Arleen Rodríguez: And why is the outside world discussing it?

Miguel M. Díaz-Canel: Why is there inflation in the world and they have not undergone the Restructuring? Because, there were fewer supply options than could not meet the demand, due to all these problems. What happened is that it would have been an inflation where the wage-price ratio had the absolute magnitude of that time, which in absolute terms would have been lower than the absolute magnitude it has now; but in percentage terms, the purchasing power of the wage in relation to prices would have been more or less the same, because there would have been the same disproportions between supply and demand.

Recently we have had to apply bankarization. The bankarization is necessary, we are creating the conditions and it has been said that it is a gradual process. What happens is that bankarization also comes at a time when we do not have cash, for other reasons. If we did not apply bankarization the cash deficit would have been greater, because with bankarization we immediately obtained a response, that more money would start to come in, more cash will be deposited to the Central Bank and it would come out of circulation.

In any case, we are not closed-minded or dogmatic, we are making an exhaustive analysis of all the antecedents of the Restructuring, where we could have made mistakes, where we could have done wrong and also what factors influenced negatively on the implementation of the Restructuring even if we had done everything right.

We do the same with bankarization almost on a daily basis, and we analyze it every week. This analysis, which will be very critical, we will share it with the population, because we have every intention of adjusting, as soon as possible, all those deviations that may exist in the measures we apply.

We do that every day with everything that happens, and we are constantly looking at what the economists are proposing, what the people are proposing.

Arleen Rodríguez: Do you read it?

Miguel M. Díaz-Canel: We read it, we study it, and I assign it as homework to other people. We do not deny any of it, we even agree with most of it, what happens is that many of the things proposed, which we are convinced about and which are part of our Macroeconomic Stabilization Program, need foreign currency to be implemented, and that is what we do not have today.

For example, today someone tells you logically: we have to expand the foreign exchange market. I agree that we have to expand the exchange market, but what am I going to change if I must have foreign currency in order to change, and today the foreign currency is practically giving us enough to buy a little fuel, which is not enough, and to fractionally distribute the basic commodities and other inputs that are necessary to maintain the vitality of the basic needs of the population.

We are willing to make that critical analysis, to rectify errors and also to analyze very specific situations. We are not standing still, but in economy, every time you move a variable, everything changes. I am convinced that wages, the minimum pension and the minimum wage must be increased. However, if wages are increased at this time and we do not have a greater supply, that increase is useless, because prices immediately go up more due to the difference between supply and demand, and after three months we are in the same wage-price ratio average, and purchasing power is lost.

So there are measures we are convinced need to be done gradually or wait for another moment, because they have to be done in conjunction with other measures.

There is also talk about why we do not subsidize people instead of products. We are working on that, which is also in the Guidelines; but it has to be done gradually. In the midst of this situation, should we take away the subsidy from everybody? Also, when we talk about vulnerable people, what is the measure of vulnerability, how do we classify the vulnerable? We are studying a methodology so that we do not leave anyone behind.

We are willing to subsidize people and not products, and this is one of the measures that may have an application in the medium term, on the concept of which people are or which family nuclei are closer to situations of vulnerability. But we have to do this well, because otherwise we will create more conflicts. In any case, not subsidizing products does not mean that we will stop importing the levels of food that we are importing now. Even if we subsidize only people, we have to make food available, even for the others who are not going to be subsidized. You cannot just attend to the problems of those you are going to subsidize, of those who are supposedly in a more disadvantaged situation.

These are all very complex problems that require a lot of thought, that is why you cannot be giving news every day on what we are going to do, because everything requires a lot of elaboration.

There are things that have been applied that were postponed and that had to be applied; for example, now there is the criticism to MSMEs.

Arleen Rodríguez: I was going to ask about it.

It is one of the action items included in the documents of Party Congress. However, there are people who said that the MSMEs could be a neo-liberal measure. What would you answer them?

Miguel M. Díaz-Canel: First of all, I think it is very offensive to say that MSMEs are an expression of neoliberalism, and it is also offensive for one who has a conviction of socialist construction based on the greatest possible social justice, based on defending the sovereignty and independence of this country, based on seeking the greatest prosperity for our people in equality.

Is the existence of a non-state sector in the Cuban economy new? Most of the land in Cuba today is managed and produced by agricultural cooperatives, credit and service cooperatives and usufructuaries. In other words, the private and cooperative sector is not unknown in Cuba; it has been in the Guidelines in the Sixth, Seventh and Eighth Party Congresses, and we reached a moment when we had had, due to all these problems, economic contraction and a worsened blockade. Well, what was the employment option for a group of people who have found an employment option in the MSMEs?

There are private MSMEs and there are state-owned MSMEs, and who arework in the MSMEs? Are they enemies of Cuba? Are they not Cubans, are they not people trained in our Revolution, are they counterrevolutionaries, can we say that they are counterrevolutionaries, are they against the Revolution, do they want to overthrow the Revolution? Let us not mixed things up.

Who wants this sector to become a sector of fracture with the Revolution? The enemy, the Yankees, and they demonstrated it now when a group, with the best of intentions, went to an event in the United States, which was supposed to be a business event, a commercial event, an exchange event, not a political one, and they politicized it, and some of them had a terrorist at a dinner. Who politicized that, the MSMEs, those who travelled from Cuba to the event, the Cuban Government? No, the United States politicized it.

But they say it shamelessly: “We are going to turn this sector into an opposition sector.” They were told that they were going to be “agents of change,” and we have seen the reaction of many of them who have not allowed themselves to be manipulated with these things.

Furthermore, MSMEs have set up productive systems for goods and services. Is everything perfect? No, it is not, it is also a very new phenomenon. They have taken advantage of certain situations in which they are ahead of state enterprises, because many of them go to seek financing in an illegal market in foreign currency that unfortunately has been created due to the lack of foreign currency by the government to strengthen our legal exchange market, to which people would go more to, if that possibility existed.

Sometimes it is easier for them to import, they are less blocked than the state forms, although they are also blocked; but they have been chained with the state forms. What does the business of many of them consist of?   They import raw materials and chain themselves with capacities that we have idle in Cuban companies, and together they have started up productive systems with efficiency.

MSMEs have also been occupying service spaces in society that the State, in a process of socialist construction, does not necessarily have to assume.

Have there been deviations? Yes, have some under this form of business sold at very high prices and have abused prices and used speculative prices? Yes, they have. But there are State entities that have also done it. In other words, these deviations are in all the actors of the economy.

Now we are making an analysis. Two years after this process became more intense and dynamic, we have the right to make assessments, which we are sharing with representatives of this sector and of the state sector. And we are going to organize or perfect the appropriate relations that must exist between the state sector and the non-state sector, making it very clear, because what there must be are clear, precise and coherent rules that do not allow distortions.

Now, those who accuse us of being neoliberals should inform themselves a little bit. If we had applied neo-liberal formulas here, we would have solved the problem of 1% of the population, and the rest, every man for himself! No. We are in a very difficult situation, but we continue to share a basic food basket with everyone, even with those who do not need it.

Besides, in the midst of this entire situation, the country approved a program against racial discrimination. Isn’t that attending vulnerability or a group of people who may be at a social disadvantage?

We have implemented a program for the advancement of women, isn’t that also addressing situations of social disadvantage?

We have gone to a process of social transformation in the neighborhoods with popular participation and not only with assistance.

We have approved a policy oriented to children, youth and adolescents, which will end with a law.

We have continued developing and maintaining social programs that were designed by the Commander in Chief in another moment of the Revolution. For example, the programs of the Battle of Ideas, which are well known, and they are still there and are supported by that economy that many times we criticize, and they oriented to the society.

In addition, we have not raised rates. Today we have companies and workers of state-owned companies at a disadvantage for not raising tariffs to the population in the midst of this situation. For example, the electro-energy workers: the price of fuel goes up, the expenses of the companies that generate electricity go up; however, we do not raise the electricity tariffs for the population, therefore, these workers earn less and less and continue providing a service to the population, and we all know the heroism of the electro-energy workers in all these times of energy crisis and electricity generation.

The public transportation companiesenterprises are almost bankrupt, because we have not raised public transportation fares.

I believe that there are luxuries that we will not be able to afford for a while, but we continue being supportive and we continue trying to take care of everyone. We have inequalities, and some inequalities have been generated? They have been generated since the Special Period, they are not new, and they have been generated before. They have accumulated and perhaps they are observed with greater dimension in complicated moments, because we are living a crisis.

In recent times, when there have been hurricanes, when there have been natural disasters, when there have been accidents, what has been done with the people who have been affected by those disasters? Has there not been solidarity from the state institutions and from the people, and has there not been work to attend them all? Then, how can we think that what we are applying is neo-liberalism? Is it neo-liberalism or is it an enormous desire to continue perfecting socialism? And to build socialism with what we can make possible today in the current circumstances, without denying and without compromising the future of socialist construction that we will reach when we overcome these circumstances.

And the other thing, which is a certainty: here the fundamental means of production continue to belong to the people, represented in the State. The main means of production are not in the hands of the private sector, nor are they managed by the private sector. They are managed by state enterprises, they are the property of our people, and here there will be no privatization of those fundamental means of production. We have to carry out a heroic work of creation, we have to heroically and creatively build the socialism of the 21st century in Cuba. That is what it is all about.

I am willing to discuss these issues and to listen, but it is slander sometimes, I do not think that all of them do it with this intention, but it is insulting -I am not speaking personally, I am speaking on behalf of the Government and the Party- when every day we are attentive to anything about how we can give a little more to the population, how we can improve. We make mistakes? Yes, we made a mistake; those who say we are neo-liberals are also making a mistake, they are making a mistake, and what they are trying to do is to create distrust and discredit in the Revolution. We would have to see what they would do if they were in our position, leading, how they would face these situations: first, if they would have the courage to stand up and face these situations, and continue believing in the dream of socialist construction, continue believing in our people, continue giving themselves body and soul to the people.

These are the opinion I have and the convictions I have on this issue, which is a complex one because it is part of a very complex economic and social situation.

Now, is it the ideal, is it perfect?

Moreover, has the world solved these things? The world is very complex, people talk about inflation in Cuba, we also have an induced inflation. But, Arleen, I do have the conviction -that is what we work for every day- that we are going to overcome this for the better, to be better later on, to have more capabilities in the present and in the future.

Arleen Rodríguez: A common friend, Osvaldo Martínez, a great economist, when I once asked him what the Cuban model was, he told me: “The anti-model, because we have never been able to do what we wanted to do,”

Miguel M. Díaz-Canel: You are right Osvaldo, we have always had to face circumstances and they have always tried to slow us down and stop what we have proposed. We are going to achieve it one day, Arleen; we are going to achieve it one day!

Arleen Rodríguez: That is to say, we are not giving up the dream of building the Cuban socialism of the 21st century, as you were saying.

Miguel M. Díaz-Canel: We are not giving up on that.

Arleen Rodríguez: We are now in the midst of a complicated situation, as you said at the beginning, a situation where, for example, in the energy issue, the availability of foreign currency is again complicated, it has slowed down the processes once again; measures have been taken that have stopped important production processes, science has been affected, strategic sectors, health, the production of medicines. If you had to define it right now, how do you assess, compared to other periods, the situation Cuba is going through now? What would you say to the Cuban people in terms of the need to understand, to comprehend and to contribute to the situation we are going through?

Miguel M. Díaz-Canel: First, an approach to the problem. For example, in the daily exercises we do to analyze the situation, where we exchange ideas and criteria to understand what we are going through and how to face it, most of our comrades agree that the fundamental problem of the country is the low availability of foreign currency, due to the levels of exports, also because of the things that have been cut in remittances, in credits -it is one of the few countries in the world that works without credits-, and other people have made the observation that the problem is of production. I believe that the two problems are closely related.

It is necessary to produce, because if you do not create wealth you have no way to distribute wealth, and much less when we aspire to distribute wealth in terms of social justice, in terms of growth, social development, and also in terms of concepts of equity. Many of the processes to create wealth in Cuba depend on certain amounts of foreign currency. So, there are two problems: we are living precisely at a time when production is very deteriorated, and we have a low availability of foreign currency. You can tell me: “It is impossible, there is no way out of this situation”.

Yes, we can get out of it. There are reserves, there are productivity reserves, there are savings reserves, there are things that can be done with a minimum of foreign currency, and others can be done almost without foreign currency. What happens is that we have to believe it. This is a discussion that is political, which we are doing now and we are systematizing it in exchange meetings that we have held these days with the provincial bureaus of the Party in each one of the territories. Because what we cannot do is to give up the dreams of the possible prosperity for our country, which this people deserves like no one else.

We have to take advantage of the possibilities we have as a socialist state to plan and distribute available resources to prioritize the productions that at this moment could give us more possibilities, and also to protect people who may be in a situation of social disadvantage or vulnerability, preserving the greatest possible social justice in these conditions.

We are in a moment where there is a contraction in the availability of foreign currency. It means we buy less food, less inputs, less raw materials. This has an impact on social sectors such as health, education and the production of medicines, which continue to be a priority.

There is a path of remittances that has gone to the illegal foreign exchange market, and that illegal market, due to the inadequacies of the legal market, which cannot counteract it, has become a place where illegal exchanges are made, and where they almost fix the exchange rates and fix the prices of the products. All this, undoubtedly, brings imbalances in the economy.

Arleen Rodríguez: And it causes migration.

Miguel M. Díaz-Canel: And it causes migration.

Translated by ESTI