Yoani Sánchez, the journalist reporting from inside Cuba
Yoani Sánchez continues reporting from Havana after ten years unable to leave Cuba. Price caps on private commerce are emptying shelves.
English · Original discussion in Spanish · Published
Reporting from Havana: the price Yoani Sánchez pays
Staying in Cuba is not a neutral decision. Yoani Sánchez, an independent journalist and founder of 14ymedio, is still publishing from Havana after enduring arrests, smear campaigns in state media, a ten-year ban on leaving the country, and a detention in which she lost a tooth. She summed it up this way: “I am committed to continuing to tell my country’s story.” There is no need to make her a hero—she rejects that label—to admit that her position is unusual: telling Cuba’s story from Havana is not the same as telling it from Miami.
What Yoani Sánchez has said about continuing to report from Cuba
The question behind it was simple and had an easy, bad answer: if so many independent Cuban journalists have ended up leaving, how can a free newsroom be sustained inside the island? Her answer was not a list of achievements but an inventory of costs: arrests, orchestrated smear campaigns, a ten-year exit ban, house arrests, and a detention that included losing a tooth.
From there, the analysis splits. Some argue that staying is the only way to maintain a primary source on the ground. Against that weighs the obvious argument: those who stay operate with less room for maneuver, less equipment and more antiestéticar, and the regime knows it. The practical consequence is that reporting from inside Cuba is produced under conditions that no Western outlet would tolerate as normal.
The price cap on private commerce and the “kiss of death” for supply
On August 19, 2026, she recounted in her Cafecito news update that she was leaving home for the first time in nearly three weeks, recovering from a bicho that looked like chikungunya, and that she walked down 14 flights of stairs because there was no electricity. What she found was a neighborhood scattered with closed signs on private businesses.
The mechanism she describes is textbook economics: setting a maximum price below the equilibrium price, without addressing the cause of the imbalance—scarce supply—produces shortages, lines and a parallel market. She calls it “the kiss of death for supply and demand”. The historical parallels are old and boring: from Diocletian’s edict to New York rent control, same result. The private trader assumes the inventory risk, and when the cap does not cover restocking or margin, they close and disappear from the map.
176 measures and the strategy of playing for time
On September 29, 2026, the focus shifted to the government. Marco Rubio accused the Cuban leadership of waiting, not acting, and of prolonging the situation. The 176 economic measures announced are limited to trade, taxes and the economy, without touching the political monopoly, pluralism or elections. Rearranging the furniture while the house collapses.
The operational detail is that playing for time is bought on credit, and credit runs out. Meanwhile, every month of delay is paid for in emigrating human capital: some look toward Suriname because entry is relatively easy. That same day, the women’s protest in Mayarí and a two-week pause due to illness completed the picture. ETECSA, too, more than a year after its rate increase, remains in the spotlight.
Who controls the Cuban economy: GAESA and the military-business network
In the realm of real power, the analysis in circulation holds that the military holding GAESA concentrates finance, banking, tourism, remittances, imports and exports: everything that generates foreign currency. It is argued that senior commanders of the Revolutionary Armed Forces operate as a network of general-businessmen, and that the nomenklatura does not need nominal posts to command. It is a much-repeated thesis that is hard to audit from outside, and it should be treated for what it is: a plausible description, not an audit.
Added to the picture, the reference to compensation for expropriations—some $12 billion in the figure mentioned in a televised debate—serves to illustrate why the economic fix never gets off the ground.
If supply remains untouched and the price cap remains in place, the predictable outcome is more business closures and more lines. Predictable, not certain: in Cuba forecasts have failed before.
Staying in Cuba is not a neutral decision. Yoani Sánchez, an independent journalist and founder of 14ymedio, is still publishing from Havana after enduring arrests, smear campaigns in state media, a ten-year ban on leaving the country, and a detention in which she lost a tooth. She summed it up this way: “I am committed to continuing to tell my country’s story.” There is no need to make her a hero—she rejects that label—to admit that her position is unusual: telling Cuba’s story from Havana is not the same as telling it from Miami.
What Yoani Sánchez has said about continuing to report from Cuba
The question behind it was simple and had an easy, bad answer: if so many independent Cuban journalists have ended up leaving, how can a free newsroom be sustained inside the island? Her answer was not a list of achievements but an inventory of costs: arrests, orchestrated smear campaigns, a ten-year exit ban, house arrests, and a detention that included losing a tooth.
From there, the analysis splits. Some argue that staying is the only way to maintain a primary source on the ground. Against that weighs the obvious argument: those who stay operate with less room for maneuver, less equipment and more antiestéticar, and the regime knows it. The practical consequence is that reporting from inside Cuba is produced under conditions that no Western outlet would tolerate as normal.
The price cap on private commerce and the “kiss of death” for supply
On August 19, 2026, she recounted in her Cafecito news update that she was leaving home for the first time in nearly three weeks, recovering from a bicho that looked like chikungunya, and that she walked down 14 flights of stairs because there was no electricity. What she found was a neighborhood scattered with closed signs on private businesses.
The mechanism she describes is textbook economics: setting a maximum price below the equilibrium price, without addressing the cause of the imbalance—scarce supply—produces shortages, lines and a parallel market. She calls it “the kiss of death for supply and demand”. The historical parallels are old and boring: from Diocletian’s edict to New York rent control, same result. The private trader assumes the inventory risk, and when the cap does not cover restocking or margin, they close and disappear from the map.
176 measures and the strategy of playing for time
On September 29, 2026, the focus shifted to the government. Marco Rubio accused the Cuban leadership of waiting, not acting, and of prolonging the situation. The 176 economic measures announced are limited to trade, taxes and the economy, without touching the political monopoly, pluralism or elections. Rearranging the furniture while the house collapses.
The operational detail is that playing for time is bought on credit, and credit runs out. Meanwhile, every month of delay is paid for in emigrating human capital: some look toward Suriname because entry is relatively easy. That same day, the women’s protest in Mayarí and a two-week pause due to illness completed the picture. ETECSA, too, more than a year after its rate increase, remains in the spotlight.
Who controls the Cuban economy: GAESA and the military-business network
In the realm of real power, the analysis in circulation holds that the military holding GAESA concentrates finance, banking, tourism, remittances, imports and exports: everything that generates foreign currency. It is argued that senior commanders of the Revolutionary Armed Forces operate as a network of general-businessmen, and that the nomenklatura does not need nominal posts to command. It is a much-repeated thesis that is hard to audit from outside, and it should be treated for what it is: a plausible description, not an audit.
Added to the picture, the reference to compensation for expropriations—some $12 billion in the figure mentioned in a televised debate—serves to illustrate why the economic fix never gets off the ground.
If supply remains untouched and the price cap remains in place, the predictable outcome is more business closures and more lines. Predictable, not certain: in Cuba forecasts have failed before.
Summary of a discussion on Burbuja.info - Foro de economía, actualidad y política., translated from Spanish and reviewed before publication. Read the full discussion (37 replies).
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