Why is Cuba in crisis?

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Listen on the NPR app. Among Cuban Americans in South Florida, expectations are high that, after Venezuela and now Iran, Cuba might be next on President Trump's list for regime change. You know, all my life I've been hearing about the United States and Cuba.

And when will the United States start? I do believe I'll be the honor of having the honor of taking Cuba. That's a big honor. Taking Cuba. Taking Cuba in some form, taking Cuba.

I mean, whether I free it, take it. I can't do anything I want with it. You want another to live very weakened nation. For 64 years, the US has had an economic embargo on Cuba, in hopes that its communist government would fall. But that hasn't happened.

The current situation, though, could be different. In January after the US capture of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduto, the Trump administration blocked Venezuela and oil from going to Cuba. And they made it very costly for any other country to step in to help. President Trump says Venezuela will no longer send support to Cuba, no oil, no money.

And it has also promised tariffs on any country that breaks the blockade. Cuba is suffering. It's greatest economic crisis in decades with the island experiencing blackouts, food shortages and long gas lines. It relies heavily on Venezuelan oil and without it, experts warn the economy could collapse leading to widespread suffering in social unrest.

I have aunties and infegas. I have cousins and infegas. My mother-in-law leaves and infegas. And their situation is worse, much more worse. This is Aloy Vieta. He's a Cuban lawyer and journalist from San Fuego's Cuba,

now based in Canada. He writes for El Tocque, an independent news outlet that's been critical

of the Cuban regime. Aloy left Cuba in 2019 after multiple detentions. Many of his friends and family are still there. We spoke to Aloy in February before the US began partially lifting its blockade of Venezuelan oil and allowing limited humanitarian oil shipments

“back into Cuba. The life is really bad right now. Really bad. Because of course,”

when you don't have electricity, you don't have water. You don't have a way to cook your food. There are many people using charcoal for cooked their food. But at the same point, charcoal is also a limited resource. A big back of charcoal right now in the formal market is like 1,500 pesos. 1500 Cuban pesos equals around 62 US dollars. And we're talking about a country where that can be more than a quarter of your monthly wages. It's a really bad situation,

and I don't think it's going to be better at least not under the secret instances that they are leaving right now. When his family was living through was happening all across the island nation of around 10 million people. Earlier this year, MPR reporter Ader Pralta went to Cuba to hear directly from the Cuban people. "My love, the thing is very bad," she says. Her friend stops her. She's saying too much in front of a microphone,

but my de-slaces have dismisses her because that's the thing about the thing, the thing can be anything. The people Ader met talked in a kind of code,

so as to not appear critical of the Cuban government, about La Gosa, or this thing.

"The thing is our food, our sustenance, our clothes." "How's the thing? It's super high. It's super expensive. It's super bad." In Min March, Cuba experienced an island-wide blackout that's left millions without any power.

“"It's the third major blackout in four months." How did Cuba get here?”

One version of the story is that the U.S.'s outside influence has made it impossible for Cuba to flourish. Not long after the 1959 Cuban Revolution at the height of the Cold War, the United States began working to undermine the communist government there. The CIA plotted to assassinate Fidel Castro at least eight times. In 60-plus years of economic sanctions have stunted the island's potential and led to Cuban people suffering. That's one side.

dissent and mismanaged the economy for decades, transforming the island into an impoverished

“police state that's forced millions of Cubans to flee." To make sense of all this, we're going”

back to the very beginning of the Cuban Revolution to look at how both sides of this story have shaped the current crisis. "I'm rom-teen at Ablui." And I'm run-dobbed Fattah. Today I'm the show Cuba from the inside and out. "This is Jamir calling from Philadelphia. I like listening this room line because I look at history as a record of our existence." From WQXR and Carnegie All comes classical music happy-out. A new podcast posted by me

pianist Maniacs. Each episode will speak with a special guest, listen to musical gems, play music

inspired games, and answer questions from our listeners. The first episode drops March 4th.

Listen on the NPR app. Part 1. The two embargoes. In January 1959, like today, Cuba was in the news.

“"The Revolution in Cuba has thrown out the Batista administration and it has installed a”

provisional government. That was the first step. Now the Revolution must consolidate itself." And all eyes were on Fidel Castro, the leader of the Cuban Revolution, who had defeated Cuba's dictator full-hencio Batista, and ushered in a new era for the island. "I know that who wrote in Cuba now who is all this knowing Cuba is the public opinion with the free press." Fidel Castro promised something different, a new Cuba ruled by the Cuban people.

"It was an optimistic time for Cuba. For many Cubans, the Revolution was the first step in

securing a real democracy." "That was the dream." "This is Lilian Gerra. She's a Cuban-American history professor at the University of Florida. Lilian was born in the U.S. in the 1970s, but much of her family remained in Cuba." "The Revolution against Batista and the 50s and the rise of Fidel Castro, the goal and the promise that they will have this nationalist, capitalist and democratic and socially progressive society."

At first, Fidel Castro was very popular. The young charismatic lawyer said he wasn't a communist

and was seen as a national hero. One of his first acts in power was to implement huge land reforms.

To break up large foreign-owned sugar plantations and redistribute that land to farm workers. "Some of these plantations, which were huge and had hundreds of thousands of acres of land, and the reality was that land was so concentrated in the hand of a few, that the land reform only affected 3% of land owners." "Who it did impact was U.S. companies that had big investments in the Cuban sugar industry.

They owned hundreds of thousands of acres of farmland. And according to Lilian Guerra, these U.S. own plantations didn't exactly play fair." "They operated in some instances like states within states where they had toll roads. They had private port facilities and all that kind of stuff. And they paid people in a company script that was only redeemable in a company store. So that is what the land reform was meant to overturn.

The land reform was passed May 1959. "Five months after the revolution." "The government starts implementing it. This of course was horrifying to those U.S. businesses who that owned this land and to U.S. investors in the sugar markets." But inside of Cuba, the land reform was seen as a big win. The thinking was that if these laborers who had worked for foreign-owned sugar plantations

owned their own land, they would be better able to participate in a free economy as consumers. Not exactly communist thinking.

“"I think that might be too an American listener who associates Fidel Castro as sort of like”

the poster child for Communism. The idea might be surprising to a lot of people." "Yes, and frankly there is nothing surprising about it." And that's because by the late 1950s Castro's message of change was becoming more and more appealing to Cubans who were growing tired of the Batista dictatorship's corruption and brutality.

Fidel does ultimately ride a wave of unconditional support for the revolution in 1959 to 1960 and he

“takes full advantage of that. "But then things begin to happen that nobody expected."”

The Castro government started to dismantle the free press between January and May of 1960. This extremely, you know, lively vibrant press, which included national television stations, which included dozens and dozens of radio stations and newspapers, you know, that all got nationalized." Many people in Cuba, especially the wealthy and middle classes, were not happy with the changes Castro was enacting. "Even in the worst moments of dictatorship prior to 1959,

the press played a heroic role. There were always journalists who were willing

a to report on what was really happening and they paid a very high price and Cubans were very aware of that." The dream of a more democratic free Cuba was quickly proving to be just that

“a dream. After the revolution, hundreds of thousands of Cubans left the island, many of them”

bound for the U.S. And the U.S. received fleeing Cubans with open arms, because the U.S. was anxiously watching Cuba, and it hoped by supporting the exodus of Cubans leaving the island, it would destabilize Fidel Castro's government. "How quickly, within Cuba, did people realize everything has changed and how quickly outside of Cuba did the U.S. realized they have now an enemy in Cuba?" "Well, the Eisenhower administration,

pretty much from the get-go saw Fidel Castro and revolutionary movement with hostile eyes."

Many members of the Eisenhower administration were suspicious of what Castro wasn't saying out loud. It was the Cold War, and they feared he was a communist. "The U.S. position under Eisenhower

“is about containment at first. Toleration at first. What nobody expected is that August”

in 1960, Fidel is going to come out with a week of national jubilation and nationalized all foretold businesses on the island." Before the revolution, U.S. companies owned or controlled 90% of Cuba's electrical grid, telephone system, and mines, and they had a large stake in sugar plantations and oil refineries. Now, all these industries belong to the Cuban government.

U.S. companies lost $1.9 billion in investment. Castro defended his actions at the United

Nations General Assembly. He called out the U.S. for being an imperial force that exerted too much power on Cuba and other UN countries. "When nobody expected is that too much later, he's going to decree the nationalization of all medium and large-scale businesses that are domestically owned." Meaning Castro's government wasn't just seizing foreign own companies, which many Cuban supported. It was also taking over Cuban own companies.

"By December of 1960, without ever having said, I'm a communist, or even revealing the degree to which he is integrated communist party members to his state. The government is communist and all but name, and it controls 80% of the economy, 80% of the economy." The U.S. was not liking what it was seeing in Cuba, and tensions between the two countries began to escalate in a heated back and forth. First, the CIA started training a special military force

of Cuban exiles to invade the island and topple the communist government. The 1961 invasion, known as the Bay of Pigs was a huge failure for the U.S. Then, Videl Castro shot back with a speech, where he declares that the revolution is socialist. And so, you know, at that point, the deal is done. Cuba was now a communist country, one that sat only 90 miles away from the U.S. And after the Bay of Pigs, as the Soviet Union solidified its support and defensive Cuba,

the U.S. decided the threat was too close. In 1962, the U.S. ramped up the pressure again with an embargo on all trade between the U.S. and Cuba. It's a disaster from day one for Cubans because so much of the food that they ate, the spare parts that were needed in factories, the clothing that they bought, you know, the products that they had become accustomed to

I think believed that this might be temporary. Most Cubans living inside the country

“still supported Castro at this point. So, there is a willingness on the part of the Cuban people”

to write out the early part of the embargo. And there also seems to be a solution, which is maybe we can manufacture these things ourselves, maybe this is what revolution meant that we should be able to be self-sufficient. My fellow citizens, let no one doubt that this is a difficult and dangerous effort on which we have set out. In October 1962, the back and forth between Cuba and the U.S. came to a head when the U.S. learned that the Soviet Union had stationed nuclear ballistic missiles

in Cuba. The U.S. created a naval blockade around Cuba to stop more Soviet weapons

from getting in. The situation was tense, nuclear war felt imminent. In the end, the U.S.S.R. and the U.S.A. struck a deal, no more nuke's in Cuba on the condition

“that the U.S. doesn't invade the island. The U.S. embargo, however, continues to this day.”

A version of the 1962 embargo or "Lakeo", "Lakeid" as some Cubans call it, is still in place. Its aim was to destabilize the Castro government by sewing, quote, "hardship and disenchantment" among the Cuban people. To stay afloat, Cuba continued to rely on the Soviet Union and the eastern block. The U.S.S.R. was Cuba's main trade partner. But in spite of attempts to build a more self-sufficient island and even with the new influx of Soviet trade, Cuba's economy faltered

and rations became a permanent feature of life. There is a certain degree of chronic capitalism that reasserts itself in the form of chronic communism. People call it sociolismo, a sociolismo instead of sociolismo. It's a play on words. Sociol, meaning "body" or "good friend" in Cuban slang. So they were saying sociolismo, meaning you're taking care of your friends, rather than true socialism. And there is a certain degree to which your body, if you're all

a bunch of loyalists, you know, whoever's your buddy who controls access to the rations or the russian distribution center will ensure that people get half the amount of dried milk they're supposed to have so that you can sell the rest of it under the table. And that black market economy very quickly becomes a standard bearer of the communist regime. For some people, like this upper echelon of communist with connections, life was pretty good. But for most Cubans,

life was far from easy. Fidel has made a disaster of the economy, and we had negative rates of growth. Fidel decides to nationalize all the remaining small businesses on the island, leaving nothing to serve as a substitute. So suddenly it's a crime to, you know, a higher

“diploma. You have to do it through the state and the state doesn't have an agency that, you know,”

contracts out plombers, you know, all of these activities, these little small businesses, even the production of many goods that have replaced imports, like there were factories that emerged because of the embargo in the 1960s that produced things like iron beds or produced those spare parts that can no longer be imported. And according to Lillian Guerra, the Castro government also doubled down on measures to qual potential descent, like the committees were the defense of

the revolution as a mass organization of people who are spying on on one another, then their role as Fidel put it officially was to be Thabba Volkas, which means mouth shutters. They are supposed to, if you're standing in line for a rush and you're complaining about the quality or the fact that they don't have half of the mouth that you're due, they're supposed to come out and tell you to shut up in the York counter-revolutionary in

Osato, and they're supposed to take your name down, and this is very effective. This turn toward authoritarian tactics was not popular with everyone in Cuba. Now it wasn't just the press that

couldn't be critical of the government. It was everyone. From 62 to 65, there's the rise of tremendous

discontent on the island in the general population. And to combat this, the Cuban government decided to invest in Cuba's youth, who they deemed as loyal, and the future of communist Cuba. The government expanded the school system, bringing education to peasant girls who would otherwise

more equality to the Cuban people, but according to Lillian Guerra, the state has captured the

“attention of the youth and has increasingly told them that their parents are the way the past,”

that they're going to be the new men in socialism, and so they need to ignore what their parents might think or say, they need to leave behind the culture of Catholicism and reject foreign influence. In some ways, this youthful disdain for the old garden Cuba echoed the youth movements rocking the U.S. and other parts of the world at the time. It's kind of like the vibe of Bob Dylan's, the times are changing. Your sons and daughters are beyond your command.

But Castro's government started to put some strict parameters on what being a good revolutionary

Cuban youth looked like. The Cuban Communist State carries out a process of criminalizing behaviors that they label as ideologically diversionary. Those behaviors include listening to the

“Beatles. They include wearing jeans. They include being gay or being a person who tolerates”

gayness. They include liking abstract art. They're all of these things that are kind of considered to be politically criminal or that contaminate the collective consciousness and dilute their people's commitment to Marxist revolution. As the economy continued to struggle, morale in Cuba was low. In 1970, Fidel Castro tried to turn it around. He announced that the

country was going to have a 10 million ton sugar harvest. Lazafra de los DS meones. And this harvest

was going to jumpstart the economy and finally allow Cuba to be economically independent. You have doctors, you have teachers. Everybody who could possibly cut sugar cane was mobilized. It was supposed to show that the Cuban people could produce for themselves.

“And in the end it fails. They came up short of their goal of 10 million tons.”

It was still the largest sugar harvest in Cuba's history. But it came at a price. In order to make this big harvest happen, the government let other parts of the economy fall apart. By 1971, people are so angry at what has happened at the state, the the way in which the economy has been devastated by this project that at any one time in the year of 1971, 20% of the workforce that even show up to work. Some Cubans call Castro and his government's economic and social

policies the internal blockade. The U.S. was blocking trade. But the Cuban government was taking away Cubans' economic autonomy and making them reliant on the government all while squashing

descent. This second embargo was not just an embargo of material things, but of ideas.

By the 1970s, hundreds of thousands of Cubans had left the island for the U.S. And Cuba, having failed to take off independently, became more and more entrenched with the Soviet Union. Coming up, the Soviet Union falls. And the world watches to see if Cuba will be next. Hi, my name is Alia. I live in the UK. I'm originally from Spain. I'm just so amazed by your work. You're listening, painting through line from in the yard.

From WQXR and Carnegie Hall comes Classical Music Happy Out. A new podcast posted by me, pianist Maniacs. Each episode will speak with a special guest, listen to musical gems, play music inspired games, and answer questions from our listeners. The first episode drops March 4th. Listen on the NPR app. Part 2. A special period. In 1991, the world order as it had been for decades, collapsed. The gradual deterioration and final collapse of the Soviet Union has hit other socialist nations,

like the aftershocks of an earthquake. Perhaps none has been hit so hard as Cuba. There's a tremendous sense of crisis in Cuba now. After the fall of the Soviet Union, Cuba entered what its leader Fidel Castro coined, the special period in the time of peace. That term came loaded with irony for everyday Cubans, because for them, this period was anything but peaceful. For decades, the Soviet Union had been sending oil, food, and machinery to Cuba.

And the entire economy was subsidized by Soviet money. The public health sector was

You couldn't pick up garbage without the oil to put in your trucks. All this stuff from the

“Soviet Union not only is it unavailable and unimportable, it actually ceases to be produced.”

And they lived a period of several years of dire, dire economic needs. This is Maria de los Anhelas Torres. Born in Cuba, she's a professor of Latin American and Latino studies at the University of Illinois in Chicago, and has written extensively about the history of US Cuba relations. Cuban people experienced widespread energy and fuel shortages. The government instituted strict food rations. Hunger increased. The staple foods from the Soviet

Union that people had relied on for decades disappeared. Blackouts lasted up to 20 hours a day.

And people would be coming out and cooking together because they didn't have the fuel for each household to be able to have their own kitchens. Desperation peaked in 1994. When 35,000

“Cubans took to the open sea on homemade rafts, risking death to make the 90-mile journey to the US.”

Their Cuban government in response had to change out of necessity. It had to open up the economy to more capitalist market forces as a matter of survival. It started legalizing some small private businesses and it also encouraged the development of foreign investment and the tourism

industry. That, in particular, was pretty hard to stomach. This is history professor Lillian

get it again. So much of the revolution's mythology created by Fidel Castro and forced by the communist party and rested on the idea that tourism was bad. That foreign investors were the pain of communism. And in fact, you get the very thing that Fidel spent the 90s and the 80s criticizing. The government began to encourage foreign businesses to set up shop in Cuba and take advantage

“of the cheap labor Cubans provided those investors. And the company is paying the Cuban government,”

not the workers directly. More than in fact, the worker will receive. Let's say that the Cuban government is receiving for every one of its workers a monthly paycheck of $500. Well, the Cuban is actually only getting 50. And the government gets to keep the rest. And so the Cuban who works in that assembly plant has to be grateful because he has more than the average Cuban. And he gets a bag of goods than nobody has. Like deodorant, really nice shampoo, detergent,

you know, basic products that are no longer available on the ration or in the national currency that are manufactured abroad imported. The Cuban government needs to fill the void left behind by the collapse of Soviet aid and it begins to turn to other countries like Venezuela. So which I was really creates a relationship with Fidel that's based on the Cuban state, contracting doctors and other professionals. Under Castro, Cuba had a robust education system,

which allowed them to train professionals like doctors to send abroad. Venezuela wasn't the only place this so-called white code army went. Doctors were sent to Guatemala, Brazil, Honduras, Haiti, and more. In exchange for doctors, Venezuela sent Cuba 100,000 barrels of oil a day. And addition to oil, Cuba also got money, some studies estimate that leasing skilled professionals to foreign countries brought in billions of dollars a year to Cuba. Then the question is what

happens with that money, okay? Is it reinvested or not? There's been investments in hotels and infrastructure around hotels. But Torres says the government didn't invest in other infrastructure like the energy grid or road repairs. All of a sudden there's blackouts. You cannot drive, okay, in certain streets because the pod holes are huge. So there's a question of what was happening to the money that was being generated. An extreme economic crisis, hunger, crumbling infrastructure,

a government response that goes against the communist ideals Castro preached for decades and ends up enriching the government more than the Cuban people. This is the situation Cuban people find themselves in at the turn of the century. You cannot escape the outrage that Cubans felt. They also were outraged by the fact that the Cuban state, whenever something would come up, that was obvious

period or they'd blame the US in Oregon. And so citizens had this incredible sort of, you know,

“memory checklist. And it was one thing after the other that Cubans complained about. The number”

of grievances were modern. It was miles long. They were countless grievances. That spark changes outside of Cuba too. And in Cubans' relationship to the outside world, particularly with the US, people's discontent with a government had also led many to seek new lives elsewhere. In the US a new diaspora of Cuban Americans started to grow and change. There was more of an outflow of people leaving Cuba. And that started changing the configuration of the community. The politics

is a whole different ballgame. But the effective relationships that people had to their relatives

was much closer. If you think about at least my wave of immigrants, the beginnings of the 1960s, we spent 20 years without seeing our relatives. Whereas people who were leaving in the 90s, they did not have that waiting period. All right. Family members in the US would send money back to Cuba or supplies. These relatives were playing an important role in the Cuban economy. Cuba was aware of the remittances and was aware of the power of how much money people could send

back. So the remittances become very important during this period of time. That was a sea change

“of attitude. I think here in Miami and in other places where there were Cuban exiles because”

people felt that they could then really have a relationship with their relatives that didn't have to go through the government. You could support your relatives, but that didn't mean you were support government. And so that is another way that I think that Cuba survives during that period. That effective tie allows for a, if you will, a Cuba beyond borders of the political to kind of exist. It was a new kind of relationship that also changed how people inside Cuba felt about

the people who had left. They saw their families as supporters and they saw their friends who left as people who were, you know, trying to better their lives, not being traders to the revolution. And they do lose confidence in their government because it's not their government who's taking care of them anymore. It's their relatives. Despite the discontent and the economic challenges, the communist government still survived. And as the economic storm of the special period started to

clear, the government would even reverse course. It tightened down the economic controls once again, like scaling back opportunities for private businesses. It's almost like liberalization is a last resort. And it is only when it is like they're up against the wall that they sort of say, "Okay, let's do this." And as soon as it is resolved, then they go back to the old ways of doing things. In those 90s, there were debates within the government. Again, I don't think it's a monolithic

“government. I think there are factions in that government that have different points of views.”

There were those who argued for liberalization. I think that the ones who argued for repression and up winning. When I look at the situation today, I think that if Cuba had gone a different direction with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, they would not find themselves in the situation that they are today. I think they opted for maintaining a centralized economy and one that is very rigid and not very productive because they were afraid of political change. So they find themselves

with a very unproductive economic system and one that tends to rely on other countries. It's almost like I think they have reached the cliffs end here. Coming up, Cuba on its way to the edge of the cliff.

Hi, this is Christina from Houston, Texas, longtime listener, first-time caller,

and you're listening to through line from MPR. The show reminds us that history is not black and white,

classical music happy-out. A new podcast hosted by me, pianist Maniacs. Each episode will speak

“with a special guest, listen to musical gems, play music inspired games and answer questions”

from our listeners. The first episode drops March 4th. Listen on the NPR app.

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Part 3. The Cuban Thaw. An announcement that Fidel Castro's opponents have been waiting for

years came in the middle of the night. In a letter published in the Communist Party newspaper, Castro said he's no longer physically able to lead Cuba. In 2008, 81-year-old Fidel Castro officially stepped down as president, handing power to his brother, Raul. That's not necessarily a transition. Giving power to the reigns of power is precisely symbolic of the political crisis that Cuba has lived since the Revolution. And that is, it has not allowed for a renovation of political leadership.

This is Maria Delosan helistores. She's a professor of Latin American and Latino studies at the University of Illinois in Chicago. Today, it was a central figure for many people, people who were not necessarily ideological, felt a certain affinity to him even if they were living in disaster.

“I think how it does not have that kind of relationship with people. And clearly, the military”

personnel that has been put in charge of the various components of the government that's

not have that repertoire at all. And so it has made it easier for people to be more critical of

the government. As Raul Castro took power, just across the Atlantic Ocean, another leader stepped into office, U.S. President Barack Obama. Throughout his two terms, Obama pursued what was dubbed the Cuban law, the start of a new chapter between the two countries, resuming the kind of diplomatic relations that had it been seen in more than 50 years. He started with relaxing travel and trade restrictions. Then he became the first U.S. President to

visit Cuba since 1928. And he called on Congress repeatedly to lift the U.S. embargo on Cuba. I have to say that Obama was like a refreshment, like a hope for many people who Cuba. Aloy Vieira is a journalist at El Doque currently living in exile in Canada. But he was born in Cuba, and he lived there during Obama's presidency. If we talk about information, for example, Obama was a change in that perspective, because after Obama visited the government decided to

allow Cuban people to have internet in their phones. In 2015, President Obama allowed U.S. businesses to invest in Cuba's telecommunication sector and build the internet infrastructure to connect Cuba to the world. The government also opened hot spots to the public. But when Eloy was growing up, Cuba didn't have public internet. The island didn't get connected until 1996, and for nearly two decades after that, web access was slow and spotty. It was also expensive to get and tightly

monitored by the government. People still couldn't access the internet in their homes, only in public spaces regulated by the state, like cyber cafes or parks. One of the main things that I remember from Cuba at that point is that in a big park, in a public space, many people scream into their phones, trying to talk with their relatives, with their friends, in other parts of the world. But you have someone seated beside you. Another seated next to you.

“So they were sharing, sometimes even intimacy. Yeah, yeah. But that's for the wife, Bonnie, right?”

Exactly. But it was funny, but it also expressed that hunger of the people to get, not just

Hey, dual internet developed in Cuba. For those who could afford it, there was access to the

worldwide web. For most Cubans, there was access to Cuba's tightly controlled and censored internet. Internet has become like a tool for many, many people in Cuba who have used the social networks as a way to create synergies between them, to create strategies between them, and to talk about the Cuban problems on the internet. And the access to internet, it changed that mentality, the way of the people in Cuba sold the rest of the world. But in the meantime,

the falling relations between Cuba and the US had frozen over once again.

Everything reversed course in 2016 with the election of Trump, and then the subsequent reversal

of policy on the part of his administration. You know, the hardliners in Cuba were re-empowered. Again, this is Lillian Guerra, history professor at the University of Florida.

“They took the reins back. I think that the end, the closure of the Obama era, it was like a hit”

of reality saying you have been leaving a fiction for these two years. What did that feel like to go from having this kind of glimpse of maybe a little bit more openness, more freedom of expression, more information to then what began to unfold in the years after 2016? I have to say that it was one of the main or worse frustrations of my generation. Travel restrictions were back. The money from US tourism and investment from US companies

dried up and the Cuban economy took a downturn. The regime wanted that you believe that something was possible on their their control. And for my generation, this generation that started to make activism, journalism, a dad moment, it was a huge frustration. The last decade in Cuba has been characterized by worsening economic desperation, and the pandemic didn't help. In 2021, Cubans took to the streets in a massive display of frustration and grievance with the government.

Cuba is one of the most tightly controlled countries in the world, which is why yesterday's demonstrations

were astonishing. They were asking, first for food medicine and vaccine, but their loudest

cries were really close to end the communist regime to under the dictatorship. And they were met with a brutal crackdown. Police detained around 1,000 people. Hundreds of whom are still in prison today. The conditions that fueled the 2021 protests have only worsened since then. And that brings us back to the start of this year, when a dire situation transformed into a full-blown crisis, as Cuba's oil supply from Venezuela

was cut off for weeks. Cuba has been short of food and clean water, suffering from intense

“power blackouts and facing its worst economic crisis in 67 years. I think that Cuba has found that”

it has really, I would say, actually almost no options. In terms of its ability to develop any kind of economic relations with countries that can help sustain the military and power in Cuba. And specifically petroleum and other goods. One thing that has been sort of debated or talked about a lot that I've been seeing in the coverage is how to interpret this moment, whether it's more the responsibility of the Cuban regime and its mistreatment of the Cuban people

for so long, or the US embargo that is more of the cause for the current crisis. The either word dynamic, it's either utterly the fault of the United States embargo, or it's the fault of the Cuban Communist government. That's of a very comfortable paradigm for both the Cuban government, as well as its detractors. I think that the argument that it's only the embargo is actually a very US-centric perspective,

“because the corollary to that is that if it's the embargo, then the only thing that can save”

Cuban people is taking away the embargo. Well, obviously the United States is a huge factor in

their hands the ability to despite the embargo make choices about how they deal with the economy,

“how they organize their politics, how they trade with other countries, how they deal with their”

own citizens. The Communist State relies on the totally economic dependency of the population. You don't have any economic autonomy, nor do you have political or social autonomy from the state, and ostensibly this is all for the general good, but effectively it has been for the general impoverishment. Cubans are more equally poor than they are equally rich, and you have an economic

elite, which is the Cuban Communist government, very top echelon that live like kings.

The embargo has actually created a series of cottage industries that have actually allowed the Cuban military to create lots of small and big businesses around the embargo that they have become a factor in not wanting the embargo lifted. These are not hard earned dollars, these are

“public monies, and I think that that is the difference, and that is where the critical perspective comes.”

So, I don't know if the regime is going to fall, but what I'm really sure is that in 2006 thumbs in is going to happen with the regime. Even in this moment when they feel or they seems being weak, they are not weak. They keep the control inside the island, they keep the narrative because even when the people have access to internet, they control, they filter internet, they keep repressive people who spread themselves on the social networks.

I think that the situation here is going to be determined by the reaction of the Cuban people.

“So, everything is in the hands of the Cuban.”

If the regime is humble, it's just because a lot of Cubans went out to the streets, they keep in the streets, and they start a new revolution. That's it for this week's show. I'm run top that fatat. I'm run teen at ablui, and you've been listening to throughline from NPR. This episode was produced by me. And me and Julie Caine. Onya Steinberg, Casey Minor, Cristina Ken, Devancariama.

Irene Naguchi, Keona Morettan. Thomas Coltrane. Fact checking for this episode was done by Kevin Vokal. Also, thank you to Johannes Durgy, Dilling Kurtz, Rebecca Ferreira, Beth Donovan, and Tommy Evans. This episode was mixed by Jimmy Keely. Music for this episode was composed by Ramten and his fan, Drop Electric, which includes Navid Marvy, show Fujiwara, Anya, Mizani. And finally, if you have an idea or like something you've heard on this show,

please write us at [email protected]. And make sure you follow us on Apple Spotify or the NPR app.

That way you'll never miss an episode.

Thanks for listening. From WQXR and Carnegie Hall comes classical music happy-out. A new podcast posted by me, pianist Maniacs. Each episode will speak with a special guest, listen to musical gems, play music inspired games, and answer questions from our listeners. The first episode drops March 4th. Listen on the NPR app.