MY visit to Cuba in November 2022 began with discussions with Juan Carlos Marsan, Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) central committee member and deputy head of the party’s international department, together with Belkys Lay Rodriguez of its European section.

Both were eager to express their appreciation of the solidarity their country receives from dedicated campaigning bodies, trade unions, the Morning Star and the Communist Party in Britain.

They were greatly encouraged on November 3 2022 by the vote of the UN general assembly — for the 30th year in a row — against the “economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by the US” on Cuba. Only two countries supported the blockade, the US and Israel, and two abstained: Brazil — led then by Jair Bolsonaro — and Ukraine, that lighthouse for liberty where all opposition parties are banned and trade union rights suppressed.

They were also pleased with the outcome of the 16th International Meeting of Communist and Workers’ Parties, hosted by Havana at the end of October.

Despite some disagreements between the participants — notably on the Ukraine war — the PCC had helped steer all parties towards a joint statement and a programme of common action for 2023.

Of course, there was unanimity in the condemnation of the US blockade. Marsan pointed out that the embargo had already cost the Cuban economy more than $6 billion during President Joe Biden’s term of office so far.

“That’s $15 million a day in lost trade and investment,” he estimated, “and we are still waiting for him to keep his promises to reverse the extra sanctions imposed by Trump.”

Biden has relaxed some measures against remittances and flights from the US to Cuba, and even granted $2m worth of aid in the wake of Hurricane Ian, but this falls a long way short of a normalisation of relations between the two states.

Not that Cuba can afford to stand still, waiting for enlightenment in the White House.

In my meeting with PCC economic chief Joel Queipo Ruiz, he enthusiastically outlined Cuba’s “economic and social model of socialist development” which has been pursued by successive governments since the party’s 6th congress in 2011.

While retaining “social enterprises as the main actors” in Cuba’s economic development, this new model emphasises the role of self-employment, non-agricultural as well as agricultural co-operatives, private and state-owned small and medium-sized enterprises, special development zones such as that at Mariel, and a new openness to “progressive” foreign capital investment that benefits the country’s economic and social objectives.  

At its 8th congress in April 2021, the PCC updated the model with some clear priorities: to develop and expand Cuba’s renewable energy capacity; increase food production using new, green technology to end the dependence on imports; secure new sources of raw materials — notably for clothing and footwear — and update manufacturing machines; rebuild and enhance Cuba’s tourist industry; and gain access to international finance, not least to boost trade and investment.

This means strengthening Cuba’s relations with its neighbours. The US has done all within its power to sour them, using the Organisation of American States to attack the governments of Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia and anywhere else in the region that refuses to bow to US diktats.

Instead, Cuba participates fully in other regional bodies such as the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas founded in partnership with Venezuela, the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, the Association of Caribbean States, the Latin American Integration Association, and in partnership with the Caribbean Community.

Cuba’s major export markets, mainly for tobacco, sugar, minerals and rum, are China, Spain and western Europe, India and south-east Asia. Its main imports (food and cereals, fuel, motors and parts, and other industrial goods) are from Spain, China, Italy, Brazil, Canada, the US and other countries in western Europe and Latin America.

Trade with India, South Africa, Singapore, Belgium, Sweden and New Zealand has been growing fast, but the biggest prize has been the co-operation plan signed with China in December 2021 as part of the latter’s Belt and Road Initiative.

China’s ambassador to Cuba, Ma Hui, an old friend from his time in senior posts in Britain, contacted me in Havana and spoke warmly about his country’s mutually beneficial relations with Cuba.

“Cuba is a great country, as my experience here confirms every day,” he told me, citing its struggle for national sovereignty, its internationalism in deeds as well as words, its contribution to biomedical science and its determination to build socialism against all the odds.

“China calls on the US to heed the voice of the international community and end the blockade,” Ma Hui declared. He clearly relishes his work to help deepen the 62-year friendship forged between Fidel Castro and Mao Zedong on behalf of their respective peoples.

A few weeks after our conversation, Cuban president Miguel Diaz-Canel flew to China to discuss even closer co-operation in areas such as green energy, biotechnology, tourism, digital technology and economic infrastructure.

Chinese investment in oil, communications, agriculture, transport and other infrastructure projects is already substantial. Discussions with China and Russia are ongoing about redeveloping Cuba’s railway system too.

The significance of these and other trade and investment agreements is not lost on the Cuban Workers Federation (CTC), which brings together 19 sectoral trade unions.

I met CTC international secretary Ismael Drullet Perez and nine other union leaders, the majority of them women, at the federation’s headquarters in Havana, where the Federation of Cuban Women was founded in 1960, 21 years after the CTC.

The US blockade, the “special period” after the downfall of the Soviet Union and, more recently, the Covid pandemic, have hit millions of workers and their unions hard in terms of jobs and living standards. Naturally, shortages of food, energy, cleaning products and medicines give rise to anger and frustration.

“We have to maintain our socialist values in difficult circumstances and defend the CTC’s principles of unity, solidarity and participatory democracy against selfishness and sectionalism,” Perez insists. The importance of collective bargaining and the process of socialist emulation has had to be upheld.

The CTC recognises the vital role of the PCC, but — as a body independent of the government — it also has to represent the rights and duties of its members. Like 20 other leading trade unionists, Perez is an elected deputy to the National Assembly of People’s Power and, together with five other CTC members, also serves on the PCC central committee.

“We have to balance the immediate needs and demands of the working class with the struggle to build a socialist society for all,” he remarks.

There can be no doubt that PCC rule rests on popular consent. For decades, Cuba was one of the very few countries in Latin America whose regime would dare to put weapons in the hands of the people and their militias, or whose leaders could risk mingling in person with masses of workers and peasants.

But this consent has to be won and, in adversity, renewed. This is especially so in poorer neighbourhoods such as Los Sitios, in central Havana, where poverty breeds drug and alcohol abuse, domestic violence, prostitution and petty crime.   

Here the government and the PCC have made some extraordinary alliances.

Dr Enrique Aleman greets visitors to the Quisicuaba community project in an old run-down but vibrant street with a broad smile and a firm handshake.

“We don’t judge, we seek to understand and help,” he tells me. Inside a narrow townhouse awaits an Aladdin’s cave of paintings, sculptures and exotic artefacts of every kind, some of them the heirlooms of his grandmother’s bourgeois family.

Many reflect the origins and culture of the original community of freed slaves from what is now Angola, who protected their heritage under a cloak of Roman Catholicism — a religious link which persists to this day.

The project has won national and UN recognition as a museum, a cultural centre and a distribution point for food and advice for hundreds of people every day. Aleman presides over it all with a softly spoken equanimity.

“Are you a practising Catholic?“ I asked him, reminding him of a common view in the West that religion is suppressed in Cuba.

“Yes, indeed,” he replied with mock surreptitiousness, before adding cheerfully, “and a card-carrying member of the Communist Party.”

At the base of Cuba’s socialist democracy are the municipal Assemblies of People’s Power, all 168 of them. Working closely with their People’s Councils and with the trade union, women’s, youth, student and other mass organisations, they discharge a wide range of financial, economic, environmental, social and cultural responsibilities.

I attended an open-air neighbourhood meeting on a mild November evening to nominate candidates for the assembly elections to be held on November 27 by secret ballot.

Maydelys Dupuy Zapata, president of the Provincial Electoral Council, welcomed residents and invited nominations. A local woman nominated the middle-aged incumbent, who then came under criticism from others present.

A young woman was then proposed, considered and voted into the next round, as were 26,745 other candidates across the country.

Campaigning by political parties, including the PCC, is banned, and party affiliations do not feature at the hustings. Subsequently, many successful candidates on November 27 were communists, some not, and many more than before are women — around 51 per cent — and young people.

But it is the PCC’s slogan which continues to inspire millions of Cubans: “Hasta la victoria siempre” — ever onwards to victory!

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