HAVANA TIMES – Few garlands, scarce Christmas trees and less popular enthusiasm are marking the last days of 2023 in Cuba. Apart from the occasional isolated celebration, the spirit of this December seems more marked by uncertainty than by celebration. Added to the long economic crisis and the mass exodus are fears about the great economic paquetazo* that the Island’s authorities have announced for 2024.
Although President Miguel Díaz-Canel has already come out to try to stop the rumors and insists that the cuts are not part of a “neoliberal” process, we all know that Cuban leaders have their own glossary of terms. For decades they have labelled the unemployed with the almost friendly euphemism of “available workers”; the crisis of the 90s was labeled the “Special Period“; and the onslaught that confiscated all private businesses in 1968, even including the boxes of the shoeshine boys, was given the heroic moniker of the “Revolutionary Offensive.”
Knowing this appetite for naming things their own way, it is clear that the authorities do not like it at all when someone gets ahead of them in naming the phenomena and moments that the Cuban reality has gone through. But, it only took a few minutes after Prime Minister Manuel Marrero began to explain before Parliament the economic adjustments that will come with the new year, for the word “paquetazo” to spread through the networks and instant messaging services. This little word names the snips that will be aimed at cutting subsidies wh