A long-standing archetype about Cuban migration is updated these days: "Cubans are fleeing the dictatorship, socialism failed them."
According to the most recent estimate on the United Nations digital portal on migration, there were approximately 281 million international migrants in the world in 2020. This figure is 128 million more than the figure in 1990, and more than three times the figure in 1970 figure.
It is interesting that from the 1970s onwards, neoliberal economic policies began to be applied in the South. Countless territories became scenarios of large-scale exploitation of labor under semi-slave conditions, plundering of natural resources, forced displacements and wars. There has been a reduction in public sector spending due to the State's abandonment of its responsibility to guarantee certain citizens' rights to become, in many cases, the armed wing of transnational corporate interests. A new kind of colonization that continues to wreak havoc to this day.
The wealth of economically developed countries, which attracts migrants, is not an indicator of the success of capitalism, but of the poverty induced by the system in the regions they have systematically exploited. It is not difficult to understand then that the most important migratory flows on a global scale follow the south-north pattern, with the United States being the main receiving country.
This context must be taken into account in order to measure Cuban migration in its proper dimension. Cubans migrate in search of economic improvements, among other reasons, as do an average of more than 200 million people in the world, from capitalist countries (which do not have a economy under siege, although they are extorted by private interests), without the mainstream insisting on disqualifying capitalism.
Cubans do not leave "fleeing a dictatorship." They leave a peaceful territory where, in many cases, they have jobs and access to all the services provided by the State at the time of emigration.
It is also common for them to travel with certain economic capital acquired through the sale of personal property and a significant cultural capital accumulated under socialism, which constitutes a significant competitive advantage in the labor market of the destination country, an advantage not enjoyed by the average person born in the case South.
In addition to this, around 50 million migrants have arrived in the United States, where they live under exceptional conditions in order to regularize their migratory situation and find employment.
Cuba has immense challenges ahead on the path of socialist transition for the future of its children. One of them is the responsibility to achieve sustainability and prosperity for all in the midst of an economic terrorism unprecedented in history, in a world shaken by capitalism crises of all kinds. Emigration will always remain a legitimate life option, but it is time to address the issue objectively.
Translated y ESTI
