Partial Recovery and Last Years as Minister

Abstract

By 1995, most economists observing Cuba agreed, the nation had “bottomed out” and the slightest of recoveries had begun. The measures taken to encourage large-scale tourism, foreign investment, diversification of trade, and allowance of limited cuenta propismo (small-scale private enterprises) for hundreds of thousands of Cubans seemed to have done their work. For several years, Cuba would know impressive growth rates, although judged against a very shrunken economy previously, and there would be a visible improvement in everything from stocks of goods in shops to generally in families’ acquisitive capacity; additionally, there would be a reduction in the costly and intensely frustrating effects of widespread apagones (electricity blackouts) in the conditions of the Special Period.¹