JOEL QUEIPO RUIZ doesn’t beat around the bush and identifies Cuba’s economic shortcomings without equivocation. He’s the head of the Cuban Communist Party’s economic department and a member of its central committee and secretariat.

Sharp but relaxed, he tells me that his country must update and expand its electricity generating plant, reduce its dependence on food imports, find new overseas sources of raw materials, develop a stronger and more advanced manufacturing base, revive and enhance its tourist industry and — tied in with several of these objectives — secure greater access to international finance and foreign currency.

To the annoyance of working people, householders and shoppers alike, oil shortages make sporadic and localised power cuts unavoidable. Half of the island’s current needs are met by imports on generous terms from Venezuela, in defiance of the illegal US embargo against trade with Cuba; one-third comes from Cuba’s own oilfield off its north-western coast, while Russia supplies some of the remainder.

Robert Griffiths (left) listens to Joel Queipo Ruiz, head of the Cuban Communist Party’s economic department

Cuba is self-sufficient in natural gas, with enough reserves to last another 60 years at current usage. But the immediately recoverable oil is likely to run out within the next 10 years without a major injection of technology and machinery. Not surprisingly, the Havana government places a high priority on exploiting wind and solar power.

Heavily reliant upon international trade, Cuba’s economy bounced back strongly from the Covid pandemic in spring 2021, reaching quarterly growth rates of 11 per cent at the end of that year and into 2022. But it has since fallen back as older, underlying problems reassert themselves.

In real terms, economic output is back to where it was a decade ago, before being struck by the triple whammy of Donald Trump’s additional commercial sanctions, Covid, and then Hurricane Ian. Growth in 2022 reached only half of its 4 per cent target, while official expectations for 2023 have been reduced to just 3 per cent.

As might be expected from a country with socialist values and priorities, Cuba achieved among the lowest Covid-19 death and infection rates in Latin America and the Caribbean, alongside Venezuela and Nicaragua.

This was done, Ruiz informed me, despite a drive by the US authorities to block sales of oxygen, ventilators and vaccines to Cuba during the crisis. Some potential suppliers in third countries were even bought out by US financial interests to prevent them from exporting such vital products to the island.

Cuba responded by accelerating the development of its own vaccines — three in use so far — and ventilators, inoculating all children under 15 and making the vaccines available to poor countries around the world. Some 40,000 Cuban medical staff currently serve abroad at low or no cost to their hosts, combating Covid and other deadly or debilitating diseases.

The country’s spectacular successes in the biomedical and related fields are spearheaded by BioCubaFarma, a complex of more than 30 companies and institutes, most of them in the public sector.

Socialist Cuba exports life-giving health workers and medicines while capitalist Britain, the US and France prefer to export life-destroying armaments.

On my visit to BioCubaFarma’s Centre of Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (CIGB) on the outskirts of Havana, Merardo Pujol outlined the enormous advances made in the research, development, production and distribution of trail-blazing pharmaceutical, veterinarian, agricultural and food industry products. As well as Covid-19, these treat various other virus infections (including hepatitis B), ovarian and prostate cancers, strokes and rheumatoid arthritis.

Numerous CIGB products are patented and marketed across the world, bringing relief and recovery to millions — with the notable exceptions of the US, Canada, Britain, the EU, the Middle East and Australasia.

Pujol and his colleagues are keen to build partnerships with other companies and institutes in Britain alongside those already operational in China and Spain. Investment capital is also needed to help finance development and licensing processes.

The modern, spacious BioCubaFarma complex stands in sharp contrast to the towns and villages an hour’s drive westwards to Artemisa province, ravaged by Hurricane Ian last September.

As with every tempest of this kind, Cuba’s local and national authorities had ploughed all available resources into preparations before it struck and the reparations after. Following the evacuation of more than 75,000 people, only three Cubans died, although enormous damage was done to houses, workplaces, farms, fisheries and power facilities in the western provinces.

Interestingly, everywhere I went in the town of Bahia Honda — whether the municipal offices, the local primary school or a care home for the elderly — women occupied the most senior positions.

They showed me the extensive damage done by Hurricane Ian before it left for Florida, yet there was no mistaking the mix of optimism, realism and stoicism on display from People’s Council officials and other citizen activists.

The town’s care home was repaired as a top priority. It houses 38 elderly residents, most of them with physical disabilities, high blood pressure or dementia and without families. Their very basic facilities include a small pharmacy, dentistry and laundry rooms, a medical laboratory, an on-site GP and around a dozen nursing and ancillary staff. An A&E service is open to the local community.

But the home was in desperate need of wheelchairs (for its seven amputees), walking frames and a replacement for its broken electron spectrometer.

The local primary school was undergoing roof repairs. Yet the all-women staff and children — many wearing Jose Marti Pioneer white shirts and red neckerchiefs — were in good spirits, enjoying a teacher-to-pupil ratio of just one to 15 (the same as in Scotland but substantially lower than class sizes in both England and Wales).

In most countries, such ratios are normally lower in special schools and Cuba is no exception. Again, at the Abel Santamaria school for the blind and the partially sighted in Havana, most of the 48 teaching staff are women. Their 61 residential pupils include 17 without any vision, while support and resources are also made available to almost one hundred other children who live at home.

The dedication of the academic and ancillary staff is deeply moving. They greatly appreciate the material solidarity received from Unison and other overseas donors. Their charges battle to overcome adversity with the assistance of braille machines, optical and mobility aids, musical instruments, specialised computer equipment and all manner of guidance from speech therapy to horse riding.

The aim is to help children as far as possible into the non-specialist schools on the same, splendid La Ciudad Libertad (the City of Liberty) campus, formerly the site of US-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista’s headquarters.

When an all-girl choir serenades their Communist Party of Britain visitor with a rendition of Amigos Para Siempre (Friends Forever), tears come to his eyes.

Then it’s back to the harsh reality of the US blockade when staff explain how they frequently lack such basic materials as toner ink for printing, black marker pens, glue, brushes and paint for artwork, and more.

Still, Cuba’s revolutionary spirit will never be crushed, I’m told by leaders of the Union of Young Communists (UJC) whose first and second secretaries — Aylin Alvarez and Lisara Corona — are both women.

At their offices, they highlight the work being done by young workers, the UJC and its mass organisations such as the University Students Federation to combat Cuba’s problems, in particular those having the biggest impact on the youth.

Many young workers are employed in the beleaguered energy sector. Young scientists and work brigades have played an important role in the struggle against Covid, while UJC projects include the provision of land for self-built housing.

The UJC also places a high priority on what it calls the “cultural struggle” against Western capitalist alienation, nihilism, anti-social behaviour, drugs, alcoholism and non-class identity politics. “Our alternative is internationalism, physical and mental wellbeing, life-affirming music and colour,” they tell me.

Progressive and socialist culture is more than adequately and routinely reflected in the inspirational work of the Hermanos Saiz Association, based near Revolution Square in central Havana.

Hosted by its international relations section headed by Danelis Hernandez, a meeting with the association’s arts, music and communications specialists outlined their countrywide organisation and activities.

Their programmes and publications take every expression of the arts and culture to the people, offering awards and scholarships to young avant-garde performers, producers and practitioners.

Its statutory aims are to stimulate artistic and literary creativity, criticism and cultural research by young people; to defend the creative freedom and artistic and literary work of its members based on ethical principles while rejecting the “misrepresentation or manipulation of the arts against the revolution.”

Robert Griffiths is general secretary of the Communist Party of Britain.