Hunger, scarcity, insecurity, violence are all symptoms of a failed state. You see it not only in Haiti, but it is present in Cuba as well, where everyone but the communist party elite is left to survive on their own.
Roberto Alvarez Quiñones explains in Diario de Cuba (my translation):
Not only Haiti, but Cuba is also a failed state
Any State whose population lives under the dramatic slogan ‘Every man for himself’ is already failed. And that is what governs today in Cuba.
The ungovernability and devastating chaos prevailing in Haiti today, with criminal gangs ravaging the country, confirm that it is a failed state. No one disputes that. However, Cuba, its close neighbor to the west, is also one, but the international community does not recognize it as such.
Certainly, the horrifying situation in Haiti cannot be compared with the multi-systemic crisis in Cuba, but neither can, let’s say, the current war between Russia and Ukraine be compared with World War II, and yet both are equally wars, though of very different magnitude and consequences.
In other words, the obviousness of Haiti as a failed state is not comparable to the internationally less perceptible condition of Cuba as a failed state. But, mind you, for the Cuban people who suffer from it daily, it certainly is. I would say that any state whose population lives under the dramatic slogan “Every man for himself” is already failed. And that’s what governs in Cuba today.
On the other hand, it’s not the same to note extreme poverty, chronic hunger, and socioeconomic backwardness in a country that has always been very poor, like Burundi, for example, than to be surprised by the misery and backwardness to which Cuba has fallen, which before Castroism was one of the three countries with the highest standard of living in Latin America and was approaching the First World. Haiti, on the other hand, was already the poorest in all of the Western Hemisphere.
What catastrophe turned Cuba into almost another Haiti?
The answer to this question is: the failed state model copied from the one that failed before in 33 other countries in the 20th century.
If there is clear evidence of the failed nature of Castroism, it is that the ultimate goal of Cubans is to emigrate, by any means and to wherever, leaving a country that was once a magnet for immigrants from all over the world. In the last five years alone, more than 600,000 Cubans have emigrated. The Island is emptying. The economically active population is leaving.
It doesn’t matter that the conventional definition of a failed state remains nebulous. If we look up the word “failed” in a dictionary, we read: “what does not work well, or does not work at all (…) that does not achieve its objectives, or fails in them.” And it is synonymous with frustrated, fruitless, unsuccessful, ineffective.
And speaking of Haiti, a constant avalanche of Cuban “mules” travels there to buy everything that the Castroist socialist state is incapable of producing. They return to Cuba loaded with consumer items as necessary as food, medicine, clothing, footwear, hygiene products, etc. And according to official data, another 3,000 Cubans live in Haiti, have formed families, and say they are better off there than in Cuba.
The creator of the Castroist state himself confessed that it is failed
The curious thing is that it was Fidel Castro himself who admitted the failed nature of the state he erected when in 2010 he confessed to an American journalist that “our model” (read communist state) did not work. That was 14 years ago. Today the national crisis is much more serious and suffocating.
Experts generally consider a failed state to be one in which there is ungovernability, chaos, armed conflicts, and therefore incapable of guaranteeing basic services to the population. It’s not a very happy concept, to say the least. In Cuba, there is no civil war, but there is a governance crisis.
The Castroist state is incapable of even alleviating the crisis, let alone guaranteeing the indispensable basic services in any modern society. It completely neglects its duties, citizens go hungry, and sink into misery. The military mafia that usurps power is only interested in enriching itself and laundering dirty money in a thousand ways.
Cubans are exploited, robbed, silenced, terrorized, and imprisoned, impoverished to sub-Saharan levels, and are made to go hungry, fatally malnourished. Yes, the Government controls the entire territory of the country, but what does it do for the people? Terrorize them and starve them.
Hunger, poverty, violence, lack of medicine, electricity, water
Today, 88% of Cubans live in extreme poverty, according to World Bank parameters. On average, they can only afford one meal a day, and sometimes none. They are even lacking bread now.
The state invests 15 times more money in building hotels than in agriculture and livestock, despite three out of every four hotel rooms remaining empty. The minimum wage is perhaps the lowest in the world: six dollars a month, and the basic food basket costs $57, at the street exchange rate of 350 pesos per dollar, as the state does not have dollars to sell.
The public health system is a monopoly of the state, and many people die or worsen their illnesses due to the astonishing lack of medicines and adequate medical care. However, the regime exploits tens of thousands of doctors abroad as slaves, robbing them of 85% of their salaries in foreign currency, much of which goes into the pockets of the government mafia.
The extreme severity of the Cuban crisis is already expressed in a pathetic form. Lately, the independent press reports eloquent news. Three people in San José de las Lajas, Mayabeque, were killing dogs to sell their meat. Also in La Güinera, they have sold ground dog meat in “El Cocinero” cans, and also meat from a type of bird. In Palma Soriano, a man hunted one and ate it. A month later, he killed a dog “to eat it on Christmas Eve”.
In Santiago de Cuba, at the Surgical Clinical Hospital, they were stealing organs from corpses, cooking them, and selling them as “ground meat”. In Artemisa, an individual ate a highly toxic giant African snail. Throughout the Island, cats are hunted and cooked. Some confess that they have survived thanks to the meat of that noble and beautiful animal.
Only in a country with great hunger does the difference between beef and dog, cat, bird, African snail, or catfish living in the sewers fade away.
On April 15, the Conference of Catholic Bishops of Cuba (COCC) asked the faithful to pray for “mothers who struggle to feed their children (…) who never tire of seeking medicines for their sick, for the relatives of prisoners who dream of seeing them return, someday, to a healthy home”.
The state has destroyed the energy system. There are endless daily blackouts that make urban life more anguishing, and greatly affect the economy. And the lack of fuel semi-paralyzes transportation.
The Castroist state only supplies water regularly to 48% of the Cuban population, the rest receives it in cycles of between three and 30 days, or never, according to Cubadebate. Isn’t the supply of drinking water one of the main obligations of a state?
Violence and citizen insecurity have also skyrocketed in Cuba, to levels never seen before. People are murdered to steal their phones, motorcycles, cars, or whatever. Armed with knives, they assault buses, trains, and steal everything. Femicides break records almost daily.
It is true that violence and insecurity have always existed in Third World countries. But not in Cuba. That so massive and alarming scourge today is a net product of Castroism. As the Roman poet Virgil said, “hunger is a bad advisor”.
Yes, that state that continues to praise radical leftism is the cause of extreme poverty, the distressing scarcity of everything, hunger, endless blackouts, the lack of medicines, and the misery that afflicts Cubans, especially since it stopped being subsidized by Moscow and Caracas.
Conclusion: No matter what they say, Cuba is indeed a failed state, to a lesser extent than Haiti, but equally failed, to use one of the synonyms found in the dictionary.
The critical difference is that Haiti has always been a failed state, but Cuba was once light years ahead of Haiti, and would be even more so now if it had not been “revolutionized.” We ought to be deeply ashamed.
“And speaking of Haiti, a constant avalanche of Cuban “mules” travels there to buy everything that the Castroist socialist state is incapable of producing. They return to Cuba loaded with consumer items as necessary as food, medicine, clothing, footwear, hygiene products, etc. And according to official data, another 3,000 Cubans live in Haiti, have formed families, and say they are better off there than in Cuba.”
What more needs to be said than this?
Haiti is so rich that it supplies Cuba with basic needs.
Cubans move to Haiti to improve their lives.