Cuba’s Reforms Favor Foreign Investment, Create Low-Wage Sponge
October 31, 2013 NACLA.org For over 50 years the island of Cuba has defiantly stood its ground in the Caribbean, rejecting a capitalist economic model in favor of a system that has served the needs of its people, first, and those of the international economy, a distant second. As a result of this determination, the Cuban model has been hailed for its successes in social and cultural development—particularly in the fields of healthcare and education. During the 1980s and 1990s when the Washington Consensus was at its peak in the hemisphere and was restructuring neighbouring economies such as Jamaica, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic along free market lines, Cuba maintained its self-determination by staying outside of the reach of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. A key aspect of the economic restructuring which spread across the majority of Latin America and the Caribbean was the implementation of export processing zones, or EPZs. The International La