In light of recent developments in Venezuela, Cuba today faces a clearer and more urgent dilemma than at any other moment in recent decades: to open itself decisively and credibly to economic reform, institutional modernization, and broader civic participation, or to continue down a path of managed deterioration that steadily erodes its margin of decision-making and exposes it to increasingly uncontrollable external dynamics. The real risk is not change itself; the real risk lies in postponing it until its costs exceed any remaining capacity for internal leadership.
What has occurred in Venezuela—beyond the accusations against its leadership and the widely contested electoral outcomes—is the result of a prolonged accumulation of power abuses, structural corruption, and a conception of the state that confused authority with impunity. Governability was replaced by imposition, and legitimacy by coercion, under the illusion that absolute control could substitute for institutions. This does not validate externally imposed solutions but rather serves as a warning about the inevitable costs of ignoring the limits that even the most closed systems eventually face.
The Venezuelan experience demonstrates an essential reality: political systems rarely collapse suddenly; they hollow out gradually. First the real economy erodes, then public trust, and finally institutional capacity. Once this deterioration reaches a certain threshold, available options narrow dramatically. Decisions cease to follow a national roadmap and instead become dictated by external urgencies, accumulated pressures, or humanitarian crises. At that point, sovereignty ceases to function as an operative principle and becomes a defensive argument.
In Cuba’s case, the debate no longer revolves solely around whether that threshold has already been crossed but around the consequences of continuing to act as if the discussion could be postponed indefinitely. For many, the signs of institutional exhaustion and the growing disconnect between power and society suggest that this point was reached some time ago. For others, there remain—though increasingly narrow—margins for an internal course correction.
What is truly decisive is that this margin is neither neutral nor preserved by inertia. It erodes with every postponed reform, with every attempt to manage the crisis rather than transform it, and with every signal that paralysis can be presented as stability. Regional experience is unequivocal: when such ambiguity is prolonged, control ceases to be a choice and becomes an illusion, and outcomes are ultimately shaped outside the domestic political sphere.
This is where the Venezuelan mirror takes on a character of strategic urgency. It is not about extrapolating scenarios or predicting outcomes, but about understanding that the indefinite postponement of substantive reforms does not preserve control—it weakens it. Each year without credible change reduces the ability to implement reforms on one’s own terms. Each cosmetic reform deepens distrust. Each institutional closure that avoids debate postpones a discussion that will inevitably return, but under far more adverse conditions.
The institutional modernization Cuba requires is not a rhetorical gesture nor a formal concession, but an acknowledgment that the existing institutional design is exhausted. More than a doctrinal debate, Cuba’s dilemma is a practical one: a model that fails to resolve the country’s central problems has ceased to be operational. Persisting in its defense as if time had stood still does not protect the country; it exposes it.
In this context, the Cuban diaspora is neither an external actor nor a political threat but an intrinsic part of the nation and a strategic asset that remains underutilized. Its human, economic, and civic capital is essential for an orderly process of institutional modernization. Continuing to ignore its discontent, frustrations, and sense of exclusion weakens any serious reform effort and undermines the country’s sustainability.
The international environment is not neutral either. Powers act according to interests, not affinities or historical nostalgia. When a country reduces its internal decision-making capacity, others fill the vacuum. Venezuela illustrates clearly how the prolonged absence of timely reforms ultimately shifts the center of gravity of decision-making. The debate ceases to be about what changes to make and becomes about who administers them.
Times have changed. The strategic priority of the United States has shifted back toward the Western Hemisphere, and Cuba has once again come under that focus. Ignoring this context is not a display of firmness but of disconnection. Adapting to this reality, engaging in dialogue with intelligence, and deciding from within is today a requirement of governability, not a political concession.
This is not gratuitous alarmism but a recognition that the context has changed substantially. Political time has shortened, and strategic opportunities do not renew themselves indefinitely. Cuba still retains the capacity to influence the pace, scope, and nature of its transformations, but that margin is narrowing rapidly. Each day of immobility, each week of delay, and each month of postponed reforms increases the likelihood that events will be defined from outside rather than by the country’s own institutions.
Cuba still has time to choose. But time, when managed instead of seized, ultimately imposes its own conditions. Venezuela has shown that ignoring reality and systematically deferring necessary decisions does not preserve autonomy or stability; it erodes them irreversibly. In politics, as in history, the greatest costs tend to fall not on those who choose to change, but on those who choose not to.
No system can indefinitely retain its capacity to decide if it confuses control with governability.
