--- description: Cuba needs “neither foreign rescue nor another official mythology. It needs the space and the institutions to rebuild itself,” writes Ricardo Torres. title: What Cuba Needs image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltff6168066bca80db/69e272f650e0cc01e7ce94ff/cuba-time-essay-torres-01.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 --- IDEASTime ideas * [Ideas](/section/ideas/) ## Ideas Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close * [Cuba](/tag/cuba/) ## Cuba Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close # What Cuba Needs Apr 23, 2026 12:00 PM CUT  Residents gather along a street in Matanzas, Cuba, during a Good Friday procession. Residents gather along a street in Matanzas, Cuba, during a Good Friday procession.Moises Saman—Magnum Photos for TIME by [Ricardo Torres](/author/ricardo-torres/) ## Ricardo Torres Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Ricardo Torres, a Cuban economist, is a research fellow at American University in Washington, DC. Apr 23, 2026 12:00 PM CUT I grew up in Cuba in the 1980s. We learned to live with less: less food, less variety, less privacy, and less control over our own futures. But the basic social contract of the Cuban Revolution still persisted in my childhood. Our living standards were modest, but our basic needs were met. Many families faced hardships, yet we had remarkably broad access to public services. We had relatively high-quality public education and [healthcare services](https://time.com/5467742/cuba-doctors-export-brazil/ "undefined") for a developing nation. Cuba had a clear sense of order, but the state imposed strict boundaries on life and limited civil and political rights. Economic activity was mostly restricted to public employment in state-owned enterprises. Individuals could aspire to be good professionals or respected citizens, but they could not genuinely influence the system or openly challenge it. The Cuban model had two existential weaknesses: economic dependence on foreign patrons and internal authoritarian control. For decades, Cuba’s poor economic performance was offset and obscured by its privileged relationship with the Soviet Union and the wider socialist bloc. Those ties offered preferential trade agreements, cheap oil, generous subsidies, and helped sustain an economy whose productive capacity fell far short of Havana’s promise of being a welfare state. The socialist bloc had profound structural problems of its own, which set the stage for the years of severe economic crisis Cuba would face after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. The other major weakness of the Cuban model was that it was built on [political control](https://time.com/4582621/fidel-castro-dies-cuba-legacy/ "undefined"), which was bound to generate resistance as society became more educated. Over the decades, Cubans moved further and further from the revolutionary epic of the 1950s and 1960s. They gained better tools to understand the world and became more capable of questioning the existing order. A population educated by the state to think, but expected to obey, was bound to produce tension. The transition to capitalism in Eastern Europe and the dissolution of the Soviet Union between 1989 and 1991 shattered the traditional Cuban social contract. While the state resisted political reforms that could threaten its power, it struggled to maintain its side of the bargain. In the early and mid 1990s, social guarantees diminished, basic needs became more difficult to meet, and social services declined. What persisted was a system focused on control, yet increasingly incapable of offering security or hope. The [economicchanges](https://time.com/5349507/cuba-modern-future/ "undefined") introduced in Cuba have been adaptive at best**.** Adjustments such as the expansion of self-employment, the more recent authorization of [private](https://time.com/4347237/cuba-small-medium-business-economy/ "undefined") micro, small, and medium sized enterprises, the opening to foreign investment, the acceptance of remittances, and the introduction of direct—though not competitive—vote for deputies to the National Assembly were designed, above all, to preserve a political order that no longer serves the interests of most Cubans. The island’s alliance with [Venezuela](https://time.com/7343019/venezuela-trump-oil-china/ "undefined"), forged in 1999, served only to postpone the structural transformation the country needs. Political paralysis has produced a mediocre government, increasingly distant from ordinary life. Beyond old and new external pressures, that combination of inertia and dysfunction could only culminate in a crisis like the one Cuba now faces.The Trump Administration’s interest in precipitating change in Cuba collides with an inconvenient truth: Cuba needs to change not because a foreign power demands it, but because [its citizens deserve better](https://time.com/7344661/cuba-trump-venezuela-oil-economy-crisis/ "undefined").  Outdated and broken computers sit unused inside the computer classroom at Benito Juárez García Elementary School, where the machines have remained since the school’s opening in 1991\. Their aging monitors and tangled cables stand beneath a portrait of Che Guevara. Moises Saman—Magnum Photos for TIME Any honest reckoning must also begin with a clear diagnosis. Cuba’s crisis is not merely economic; it is also political, in a deeper institutional sense. The current system has proved incapable of producing leaders with new ideas, unwilling to allow citizens to hold their leaders accountable, and unable to carry out the reforms the country has needed for decades. The Cuban government has prioritized the preservation of the status quo over the pursuit of solutions, ideological conformity over the lessons of experience, and tight control over meaningful change. The political order itself has become the principal cause of the crisis. What Cuba needs falls along the economic and political dimensions. Cuba needs an economic model that blends freedom, social protection, competition, and public purpose. The closest analogue is the social market economy in the European tradition: a framework that rejects the poor alternatives of an economy controlled by an all-powerful state and an economy abandoned entirely to market forces. This approach supports private initiative, entrepreneurship, and competition as engines of innovation, efficiency, and wealth creation—while insisting that markets operate within a framework of rules, institutions, and social responsibilities. Balance will be essential. Cuba must resist the temptation to leap from bureaucratic centralism to a harsh, socially detached form of capitalism—trading one dogma for another. What the island needs is an economy that encourages work, talent, risk-taking, and investment while safeguarding dignity, opportunity, and social unity. It should also preserve some of the country’s core moral traditions: that education is a fundamental good, that access to healthcare should not depend solely on purchasing power, and that exclusion of whole communities, whole generations, is not an acceptable price for growth.  Cuba is in the grip of a deepening fuel crisis that has rippled across nearly every aspect of daily life. Chronic shortages have crippled transportation, stalled public services such as trash collection, and intensified already severe electricity blackouts. Moises Saman—Magnum Photos for TIME Moises Saman—Magnum Photos for TIME --- > “What Cuba requires is neither foreign rescue nor another official mythology. It needs the space and the institutions to rebuild itself.” --- Politically, the changes Cuba needs go well beyond the standard demands for civil and political rights. Cuba needs political transformation not only to expand individual liberty, but to remake public life itself. It needs leaders capable of diagnosing problems honestly, designing policy competently, and articulating a new national horizon. It needs institutions capable of representing the true diversity of Cuban society. This is not a cosmetic concern. A system that cannot represent diversity cannot process conflict intelligently. A system that cannot renew leadership eventually mistakes continuity for stability and discipline for effectiveness. That confusion goes a long way toward explaining why Cuba has been unable to implement the reforms it has needed for so long. Cuba will also need the active engagement of the international community if it is to achieve a genuine national rebirth. That includes the United States, which—by virtue of geography, history, and economic scale—is the external actor with the greatest capacity to influence the island's future. Without a fundamental change in the bilateral relationship, stabilization will be far more difficult to achieve. The economic deterioration in Cuba is now so severe that extraordinary emergency support will be necessary to stabilize the country and relieve human suffering. Given the gravity of the crisis and the long reconstruction effort that lies ahead, Cuba should also recalibrate its international activism. For decades, it has maintained an international presence that far exceeds its economic weight. In the years to come, Cuba would be better served by cultivating constructive relations with as many states as possible and scaling its contributions abroad to its real capacities rather than its historical self-image. Cuba should also adopt an explicit and serious strategy for integrating its diaspora into its economic and political life. No serious project of national reconstruction can afford to treat millions of Cubans abroad merely as little more than sources of remittances, or as passive spectators. What Cuba requires is neither foreign rescue nor another official mythology. It needs the space and the institutions to rebuild itself: a government that trusts citizens rather than fears them, an economy that generates wealth without sacrificing social justice, a political system that accurately reflects the realities of the nation, and an international posture aligned with the practical demands of reconstruction rather than the vanities of the past. [TIME Ideas](https://www.time.com/ideas) hosts the world's leading voices, providing commentary on events in news, society, and culture. We welcome outside contributions. 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