Interview with Cuban Leader Ernesto Limia Díaz

We are pleased to publish below an interview with Ernesto Limia Díaz (EL), a historian, writer, member of the National Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba (known as UNEAC, its Spanish-language acronym), and director of the TV program MARCAS. He is also the author of the bilingual book Patria y cultura en Revolución (Homeland and Culture in Revolution).

Duane Stilwell (DS), the editor of Panorama-Mundial, the Spanish-language sister publication of World-Outlook, conducted the interview in Havana, Cuba, on October 18, 2025.

The interview follows up on important questions facing Cuba and its people that Limia Díaz addressed in an essay, which first appeared on Facebook on July 18, 2025. World-Outlook published that essay,  ‘Everything for the People and with the People,’ on July 21 with the author’s permission.

A summary of the main points of that essay can be found in the introduction to Part I.

In the interview that follows Limia Díaz expands on these issues.

He notes, for example, “We have people in Cuba today with a neoliberal mentality. We cannot ignore it, or we will not be able to put a stop to it. They do not call themselves antagonists of the Revolution, but deep down they are. They do not identify as such because they know that the Revolution still has the strength of the majority, but they are crouching there and trying in a thousand ways to put the strategies of the market above society.”

We believe the Cuban leader’s candid observations are of enormous importance and would interest anyone concerned with the challenges facing the Cuban Revolution today.

The interview was conducted in Spanish. Translation into English, as well as photos and notes, are by World-Outlook. Due to its length, we are publishing the interview in three parts, the third of which follows.

— World-Outlook editors

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(This is the third of three parts. The others can be found in Part I and Part II.)

DS: I was discussing with people from the Cuban press the challenge of preventing neoliberalism, or capitalist ideas, from confusing working people. They asked me: Well, how do you defend the politics of your magazine? I gave the example that in the United States many union leaders accept the premise of Trump’s America First slogan, separating and “defending” U.S. citizens from the “hordes of the South.” But to defend the U.S. worker, you must defend workers around the world, because if you don’t defend the most marginalized, the undocumented immigrant workers in the United States, you can’t defend the American worker.

EL: Of course not!

DS: And that is why it is important that some trade unions have come out to defend their members, as with Kilmar Abrego García, who was deported to El Salvador and incarcerated in the notorious Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT prison after its acronym in Spanish. His union, SMART, has defended him with lawyers, press conferences, and demonstrations. That is an example that should be emulated across the United States, but also in other countries.

In your July essay, you referred to those in Cuba who “work to submit us to their will in the name of the laws of the market.” How widespread is that among Cubans today, i.e., the attraction to the “laws of the market,” or to capitalism?

EL: Well, when I was talking about those who work to bend us to their will in the name of the laws of the market, I was referring to technocrats and neoliberals. We have people in Cuba today with a neoliberal mentality. We cannot ignore it, or we will not be able to put a stop to it. They do not call themselves antagonists of the Revolution, but deep down they are. They do not identify as such because they know that the Revolution still has the strength of the majority, but they are crouching there and trying in a thousand ways to put the strategies of the market above society.

There are situations in daily life that generate a breeding ground. One example is what is happening with our medical services. For example, there are nurses who, in order to survive in the midst of these conditions, do private work caring for patients. They make money this way. That has an influence on the ideological field. So, you can find private dental clinics and even unscrupulous technicians who charge you for a hospital service.

At the same time, the Revolution cannot be so rigid at a time when it cannot provide all the benefits to everyone, because that would suffocate people when it is not in its hands to offer a solution, and it would create more resentment: “You don’t help me, you can’t help me, fine, but then don’t bother me.”

I remember that in the ’90s there was an old revolutionary who said: “Sir, we have to cope with the family in these conditions, perhaps we have to turn a blind eye at some point.” This is where loyalty to principles and human sensitivity come together with political acuity to know when we should turn a blind eye. We are living it! This is a complex moment, very, very interesting.

DS: And there is no guide. In other words, there is no route. Even though you are trying to trace it.

EL: Exactly. We, Cuba as a revolution, are the ones who are toughing it out. Today we are clearing the way forward. No one is living what we are experiencing. Venezuela has its own difficulties, but it has oil, it is not the same, nor is their blockade as ironclad as ours.

DS: No, of course not, I have been to Venezuela.

EL: The blockade is not like ours. They are not on the list of countries sponsoring terrorism. Yes, they face other measures, they have a blockade that is very strong for them. But not even in dreams is it like the one erected against us piece by piece for more than 60 years. It is very complicated, a hard battle, essentially cultural.

I believe that we are waging battle in the midst of the most adverse conditions, and despite all our deficiencies we are on the offensive, we are not paralyzed. In the middle of such adverse conditions, we have approved the most revolutionary Family Code^[1] that exists on the face of the earth. In the midst of the greatest difficulties, we approved a Children’s Code that must be one of the most revolutionary on the face of the earth.

DS: The most advanced one I know.

EL: During the harshest conditions, there is freedom of opportunity in the country, which is not plentiful, because all over the world — and you know this, because you are in the United States, or Mexico — the big fish swallow the small fish. And in no country in the world today are there so many opportunities for the development of individual initiative by stimulating small and medium-sized private enterprises as in Cuba, and in Venezuela as well. Freedom of opportunity.

Today, Cubans — just like in Venezuela — with a source of financing, with a loan, with some funds to open a private company, can do it. There is extraordinary flexibility. But unlike in Venezuela, those who are betting on these individual strategies thanks to the educational system they enjoyed under the Revolution, as a rule have university degrees. Where else? 

That is not found in any country in Latin America, because you go anywhere and visit the large malls and they are all from the same companies. In Latin America, in Europe, Africa, or Asia, you see the shop windows and the names of the firms are the same. The large monopolies dominate, and the rest is the informal economy.

Now in El Salvador, in an attempt to organize that, Salvadoran society created an entity called a simplified corporation, where you pay a dollar and register as a company. Why are they doing that? Because what they want is for the street vendor to become organized so that they can formalize the sector, in order to put an end to the informal economy — so it can be formalized — but since they know that they are the poorest, the most marginalized, they are asking for a dollar.

Economies are in the hands of monopolies. In Cuba, there are many people who have made mistakes, people who, based on these opportunities that the revolution has given, have made small businesses and have prospered, and they have come to believe that they can manage in other places. They leave the country and, when they arrive in the United States, they have to start from scratch: they return to salaried work, sometimes with minimum paychecks for the standards of that country, undeniably the one with the highest purchasing power in the world, even if it is thanks to the Union’s public debt.

Today Cuban private entrepreneurs are our best allies in denouncing the blockade because they are its victims. They have to bring things from Asia, from Turkey, when if they brought it from the United States the cost would be minimal.

DS: And when tourism goes down, that affects them.

EL: Exactly. In addition to that, those who must import their supplies, if your container comes on a ship and they sanction the ship, or if you have to bring the container from India or Uruguay or China, when you have the market here 90 miles away.

The problem with China is that it is privatized as well. And China is the main supplier to the United States. The Chinese ships that bring their things to the United States, if they come here then they are punished, and they cannot dock over there, and that is their market. It’s a sick joke.

There are people who say that we hide behind the blockade, that China is there to help us. The problem with China is that it is also privatized. It is a country that Xi Jinping has said he turned around to put the market at the service of human beings — a Herculean task after the Chinese reforms that brought about wholesale privatization. But we must not forget that we are talking about the main supplier of the United States. The Chinese ships that bring their wares to the United States, if they come here to Cuba they are punished with the laws of the blockade, and then they cannot dock over there, where their main market is, for six months.

To say that we don’t use Chinese shipping companies because we don’t feel like it is a sick joke. They say, “Well, you are friends of China.” Yes, we are, but the company in China, the majority, is private, and for the Chinese ship, the Chinese shipping company, what are you going to prefer? Cuba or Los Angeles? Cuba or New York? And they work under the same rules.

Today the biggest problem is Trump’s tariff war. Trump does it with the goal of political blackmail and pressure. But the background of those who are promoting this policy in his administration is to bring back the large American industries that left the Union [the U.S.] in search of cheap labor in China, Vietnam, India, Mexico… The largest Ford car production complex is in China;^[2] the largest iPhone producer is China. Now they are trying to move it to India, but they are still in China.

As a result, several of the large Chinese manufacturers are American and bring their products to the United States with those shipping companies. That is, those products are brought by the shipping companies that could come to Cuba loaded with Chinese products. Do you realize the dilemma? That is the background of the economic war. And they say they sell us food, yes, but we have to pay in cash. The only ones who have to pay cash — even before the arrival of the food – are us. That is not how anyone in the world pays. It is an atrocious thing.

What is the solution?

Fight, struggle. There can be no Revolution in Cuba if the political siege is not broken. And the political siege is broken with cultural exchange. What is the greatest cultural support in the broadest sense? What is the greatest support that revolutionaries around the world can give Cubans in today’s conditions? Help us break the political blockade, because by helping us to break the political blockade they help us to raise awareness among businessmen who are going to take the risk of helping. Help us raise awareness.

We are here producing ideas, generating critical consciousness against neoliberal ideology and fascism. It is important that these ideas go out into the international arena, that the left does not feel orphaned of revolutionary theory.

Some of these ideological and cultural phenomena of neoliberalism are in that book that I just gave you, which is a short, bilingual book, in Spanish and in English: Homeland and Culture in Revolution.

DS: Is there anything else you would like to convey to an audience of young people and workers in the United States?

EL: Once, Fidel was asked, “Fidel, how do we deal with all this?” He was asked this question at a meeting of intellectuals. “What do we do in this chaotic world?” What did Fidel answer? “Sow ideas. Sow awareness.”

And the other thing I can say is that you don’t sow ideas or sow consciousness if you’re not able to build a vanguard. I think that we must place bets now ― in the midst of this disbelieving world in which those who dissent are targeted ― on building an intellectual vanguard. You cannot bank on everyone reading a book, but you can prepare people who will be capable of reading it, interpreting it and translating it into the codes of our popular bases; people capable of generating moral leadership. And on that path of reaching people, on the basis of cultural leadership and ethics, build the new political scenarios of the revolutionary struggle.

That is the great battle.

(This was the last of three parts. The others can be found in Part I and Part II.)

NOTES

[1] After a referendum approved by 74% of the 8.4 million Cubans who cast ballots on September 25, 2022, Cuba enacted a new Family Code. The Code redefined “family” as an association that may take different forms, but is based on values of love, respect, and solidarity. This represented a further break from the traditional “father family” — a heterosexual couple with children and sometimes elders, in which the father is dominant in both financial and social matters. That was the model in pre-revolutionary Cuba.

With this new definition, the Code legalized gay marriage and civil unions, as well as the adoption of children by same-sex couples. The new law also strengthened the rights and protections of children and adolescents, further ensured the rights of women, and promoted equality in sharing domestic rights and responsibilities between parents — regardless of sex or gender. It also strengthened the progress that Cuba has made in addressing domestic violence and codified the rights of the disabled and the elderly within the family.

For more information see New Cuban Family Code: A Revolutionary Achievement, published by World-Outlook on October 17, 2022.

[2] The largest Ford car production complex in China is the Changan Ford Chongqing complex, located in southwestern China. It is a joint venture between the local Changan Automobile and the U.S.-based Ford Motor Company. It includes multiple assembly and engine plants and employs more than 10,000 workers. In comparison, Ford’s largest car production plant in the United States is the Kansas City Assembly Plant in Missouri, which is also the largest car manufacturing plant in the country, employing about 7,000 hourly workers.

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