The hurricane Melissa was still a problem in the Caribbean Sea when the Cuban government announced a new plan “to correct distortions” and “revive” the depressed national economy. People paid little attention, they were busy counting the hours until the disaster arrived, they were busy dismantling roofs and windows, saving candles and freezing the little food they had, aware that the cyclone would leave them more defenseless than before. Approximately 48 hours after the devastation of the eastern part of the island – and amidst the relief efforts of isolated communities, with the danger of overflows still evident, people without communication, electricity cuts and collective desperation – the Government brought to light an announcement that had been kept silent for more than a year: the accusation of several crimes against the former Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Economy, Alejandro Gil Fernández, former right-hand man of the ruler Miguel Díaz-Canel and responsible for many of the latest economic reforms of the country, some of which already count as historic failures of the Cuban economy.
A statement from the Attorney General of the Republic, dated 31 October, informs that, at the end of the investigations carried out by the bodies of the Ministry of the Interior, where “due process was guaranteed”, Gil Fernández was found responsible for the crimes of “espionage, acts prejudicial to economic or contractual activity, embezzlement, corruption, falsification of public documents, tax evasion, influence peddling, money laundering, violation of the law on the rules for the protection of confidential documents and against the theft and damage of documents or other items in official custody.
The note, short and not very detailed, did not go unnoticed by the Cubans, who were also busy recovering from a hurricane that caused many disasters. People are wondering why such an announcement appeared now and not before, and quite a few have asked for transparency from the 61-year-old former minister, unexpectedly fired in February 2024, when the government was also announcing plans to oxygenate an economy that is not emerging from the crisis. Part of the citizenry is now demanding not only to be informed of the events, but also for a public trial to be held.
The news arouses suspicion among many, including economists. “The crimes of which he is accused are very serious for a person who held a position of such level,” Ricardo Torres, former researcher at the Center for Studies on the Cuban Economy and professor at the American University of Washington, told EL PAÍS. “A cause of this caliber is in the public interest and citizens deserve to know about it,” says Torres.
However, the economist underlines the government’s intention to “attribute” all the responsibility for the “economic disaster of the island” to the defendants. Although Gil Fernández carries on his shoulders the catastrophe represented by the 2021 Task Order – which promised to lift the country out of stagnation with the end of the dual currency and a price reform, but which ended up plunging the island into a deeper crisis – experts understand that the responsibility never falls on just one person. “It is a very shared responsibility. All relevant measures in this area are approved at the highest level and have been reviewed and applied with the approval of the Council of Ministers or the Political Bureau,” says Torres.
He also points out that official rhetoric suggests that economic problems began and worsened during his time as minister. “This is absolutely false. The Cuban economy has been in a terrible situation for decades, during which time what we reap today was sown,” he says.
After being freed “from his responsibilities” last year, at the proposal of Díaz-Canel, and although the country has promoted other reforms with the promise of improving the permanent crisis situation, the truth is that the Cuban economic tragedy is structural and does not just bear the surname Fernández Gil. “After his departure, the Government Program was promoted with great fanfare, but the productive collapse continued. So it seems very clear that there is something that is not working and it has nothing to do with one person exclusively,” says Torres. Most Cubans are currently calling for the resignation of the president and his prime minister, Manuel Marrero.
Television trial and “transparency”
First of all, dismissal; then the subsequent silence and then the sudden announcement of the crimes attributed to Alejandro Gil, strongman of the Castro leadership since 2018, highlight the tensions that evidently exist within the government apparatus of Havana. It is curious how in 2024 Díaz-Canel – also supervisor of the former Minister of Economy’s doctoral thesis – warmly congratulated him on his 60th birthday, a few days after announcing his dismissal. The truth is that there has only been darkness surrounding the case.
His daughter, Laura María Gil González, who according to her social profile works at the financial and insurance services company Grupo Caudal, has come out into the public arena to express her “deep dismay at the events”, an unprecedented statement among relatives of the Cuban high powers, who in most cases remain silent.
In a post on Facebook, the young woman, in a respectful but at the same time provocative tone, underlines her “commitment” and that of her family towards the country, and asks that they be “totally transparent and give complete information to the people” about what will happen from now on with her father. “As all Cubans do today, I join the popular demand that an open-door trial be held, in which anyone who wishes can participate, and that it be broadcast live on Cuban television and Cubavisión International, with the participation of the official and non-official press, and which in turn can be broadcast live by the foreign television networks present.” Then he added: “Not just me, Alejandro Gil also demands it, not from today but from day one.”
The incident brought many back to the 1989 televised trial of Revolutionary Armed Forces Major General Arnaldo Ochoa, accused of smuggling and drug trafficking. A military tribunal concluded with the request for the death penalty for him, for Colonel Antonio la Guardia and for other soldiers. Now, what worries many in the Fernández Gil case is the charge of espionage, which can be punishable by life imprisonment or the death penalty, according to the Cuban penal code.
According to his daughter, this was the “cornerstone of this investigation”, which is why he asks that other important details be explained to the Cuban people: “What he did, which country or countries we refer to, since when, what were his means of communication, what he received in return, where he held his meetings, in what environments, with whom, by direct order of whoever did it, what information did he reveal, what measures did he propose to the country by explicit order of another State, what evidence do they have, what was his pseudonym?” he wrote.
Gil González also insisted that his father remained “firm in his defense” and that he “will not acknowledge, under any circumstances, any crime that is attributed to him and that has not been duly verified.”
An economic plan to “correct distortions”
After the dismissal of Gil Fernández, replaced by Joaquín Alonso Vázquez, Cuba is not a very different country: its economy continues to collapse, inflation reaches 15%, long days of blackouts remain due to lack of fuel or foreign currency to reshape the electrical energy system, the reign of the dollar prevails against the increasingly weakened Cuban peso and levels of poverty are palpable in the daily lives of the population.
In this context, aggravated by the recent passage of the hurricane Melissathe Government has opted for another new economic reform plan, which proposes, among other things, to “advance” the implementation of the Macroeconomic Stabilization Program, to influence the reduction of the fiscal deficit or inflation, to diversify the country’s foreign income, to increase national production, especially food, to strengthen some social policies, to work to improve the national energy crisis and to promote housing construction. The authorities also stressed the importance of reducing subsidies, increasing the cost of services such as electricity, water or transport, and recognized the impossibility of monetary unification for the moment.
For economist Ricardo Torres, although the new program recognizes a series of accumulated problems and articulates a broad set of actions and objectives, “some of which are necessary, especially those related to macroeconomic stabilization,” the plan “remains anchored in an administrative approach and the search for immediate, rather than transformative, solutions.” According to him, the strategy seeks to “correct distortions”, but “without altering the foundations of the current economic model, which are precisely the source of many of the recognized dislocations”.
The economist is also of the opinion that the plan maintains a “restrictive” vision of the private sector, which continues to be assigned a “complementary role” and which “is subject to controls, regulations and limits that make its expansion impossible”. In the end, the program does not “frankly address the more structural dimension of the problem, that is, the need to globally reform the Cuban economic model.”
