Dear Editor,

Your editorial on Cuba, published on November 9, contains an inaccurate hypothesis. Cuba has not started “a transition from communism to capitalism”, but rather it started a process of updating its economic model aimed at guaranteeing the continuity and irreversibility of socialism, the country’s economic development and the improvement of the living standards of the people.

After a democratic and serious consultation with the people, the recent Sixth Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba approved the “Guidelines on the Economic and Social Policy of the Party and the Revolution”, which constitutes the compass for the gradual updating of our economic model.

On November 10 new legal regulations came into force, which govern the sale and purchase of homes and reduce the formalities for the home ownership transfer among citizens. The aforesaid is part of the various decisions the Cuban government has made in keeping with the said Guidelines, in which it is asserted that the economic system that shall prevail in Cuba will continue to be based on the people’s socialist ownership over the fundamental means of production.

The updating of the economic model shall be also governed by planning, which will take into account the market trends. In addition to socialist state-run enterprises – the main national economic structure – such model will also recognise and promote other modalities; namely, foreign investments, cooperatives, small farming, usufruct, franchisement, self-employment and other forms that may emerge and contribute to increased labour efficiency. In the non-State management forms, the concentration of property in the hands of any natural or legal person shall not be allowed.

The growth of the non-public sector of the economy, far from an alleged privatisation of the social property, as some theoreticians would have us believe, is to become an active element facilitating the construction of socialism in Cuba since it will allow the state to focus on raising the efficiency of the basic means of production, which are the property of the entire people, while relieving itself of the management of those activities that are not strategic for the country.

That will make it easier for the state to continue ensuring health care and education services free of charge and on equal footing to all of the people and their adequate protection through the social welfare system; the promotion of physical education and sports; the defence of the national identity; and the preservation of the cultural heritage, and the artistic, scientific and historic wealth of the nation.

Necessary changes will continue to be undertaken in Cuba to guarantee the sustainability and irreversibility of the socialist nature and the political and social system enshrined in the Constitution of our country. To have more revolution and better socialism, Cuba will continue to change at the adequate pace mindful of our objective conditions and never jeopardising the unity of the nation around its revolution.

With that political and social system, and despite being under an unjust blockade, Cuba has recorded certain achievements. Among them are: the eradication of illiteracy and the gradual increase of the population’s level of schooling, attaining in 2010 the figure of one million university graduates since 1959; an infant mortality of 4.5 per one thousand live births in 2010; a 2.1 per cent growth of its GDP last year and a 2.9 per cent growth by the end of 2011; Cuba was ranked 53rd in the 2010 Human Development Report; a scholarship programme which has graduated more than 30,000 university students from over 130 countries while thousands of other scholarship students are currently in Cuba; the various cooperation projects implemented in other developing nations including Caricom countries, and especially Haiti.

Yuri A Gala López

Cuban Ambassador to Jamaica

jmision@cwjamaica.com