Cuba: a tiny island nation that upset U.S. hegemony through the power of example.
Even as a revolutionary, Castro often spoke in radical-liberal tones about freedom, about democracy, about the rule of law. He insisted that these values could not be realized without the economic justice of state-distributed medicine, of education, of collective ownership of Cuban energy and utilities. “We haven’t chosen this struggle,” said El Presidenté while wearing military fatigues and brandishing a rifle in 1967; “It’s been imposed on us.”
As a statesman, Castro was at his best when he asserted how socialism was needed to achieve the liberal ideals that were stymied under free-market capitalism.
At the same time, El Presidenté was at his worst as a dictator who ruled undemocratically. The customary military fatigues; the strident hours-long speeches; the greying beard: by the end of the 20th century, they all appeared the gamey trappings of an aging autocrat.
Same-sex relations were officially decriminalised in Cuba in 1979, a quarter century before the United States.
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A crucial element is missing in the story: the economic context of an island during its dependency on the Soviet Union’s and how that shaped its industrial, and therefore, its whole development, the acute shortages, migration, etc.
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Sugar accounted for 70% to 80% of Cuba’s total export revenue. By the 1980s, the Soviet Union alone swallowed over 50% of all Cuban sugar exports. Sugar made up over 80% of the total value of everything Cuba shipped to the USSR.
By the late 1980s, total Soviet subsidies—largely anchored by the sugar trade—averaged $4.3 billion annually. This staggering sum accounted for 21% to 23% of Cuba's entire Gross National Product (GNP. Meanwhile, The Soviets supplied Cuba with nearly 100% of its petroleum at below-market rates.
The collapse of the Soviet Union plunged the island into the "Special Period" (Período especial)—a brutal economic crisis marked by severe food shortages, widespread blackouts, and a near-total collapse of domestic productivity.
After the fall of the Soviet Union, the Cuban government pivoted to tourism to harvest foreign hard currency. However, this created a new form of mono-industry vulnerability:
The Cuban state poured billions into constructing luxury hotels through GAESA, a massive conglomerate run by the Cuban military. Critics call this a "twisted priority" because the government overbuilt hotels while starved essential domestic sectors like agriculture, healthcare, and the public electrical grid of funds. That is exactly what I lived and witnessed in my stay in Cuba in 2024: poor agricultural products, frequent and long power outages, reliance on state provisions of basic staples such as bread, toilet paper and rice…and a parallel economy for those who get access to the dollar and imported goods.
Tightened U.S. sanctions targeting military-run tourism firms have caused a mass exodus of foreign investment. Heavyweight international hotel chains (including Spain's Meliá and Iberostar) and major airlines (like Air Canada and Iberia) have sharply pulled back or entirely ceased operations on the island.
The industry has been crushed by Cuba's internal collapse. Unreliable infrastructure, severe jet fuel shortages, and widespread electrical blackouts mean hotels cannot stay powered, leading the government to shutter 73% of the nation's hotels.
Tourism originally created a stark societal divide between those with access to foreign currency (tourist guides, taxi drivers, hotel staff) and those paid in weak local pesos (doctors, teachers, engineers). A taxi driver catering to foreigners could easily earn significantly more in a day than a surgeon earned in a month, fuelling a massive brain drain out of vital public sectors.
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