Cuba is coming apart at the seams. I know, I know — it’s been falling apart for literally decades, and one of the sad demonstrations of the past few years is just how long a country whose leaders don’t care about their people’s welfare, because they don’t have to, can be held more or less static. (See also Venezuela, Iran, North Korea). But, you now, “gradually, then suddenly.” There’s some reason to believe that Cuba is approaching the “suddenly” part of that equation. That’s bad news in the near term, but I have some thoughts on the longer term, too, and they’re much more positive.
As Jonathan leaf writes, Cuba is now moving from desuetude to collapse:
The country’s economy has been virtually non-functioning for years. That’s indicated by the pictures, placed below, which I took on a trip to the country in 2019.
It was Christmas, but there was almost nothing in the general stores to buy. Worse, people had to stand in long lines at food markets in order to get their hands on the few remaining potatoes and onions. Those markets were nestled in amid collapsing buildings and abandoned homes. On the adjoining streets were other lines of people. There ordinary Cubans queued up, glass-bottles in hand, waiting for the drinking water that they took from tanker trucks on the city streets.
Yet things are much worse now. . . .
Cuba is reliant on foreign aid because it can’t produce much of anything anymore. Even the items it was famous for making it can no longer manufacture in quantity. It’s now even importing sugar! It gets much of its current supply from the Dominican Republic, and then it sells this at inflated prices to China. (This is another way in which China is effectively subsidizing Cuba.) Cuban sugar production is only a little more than one-fourth as much as it was when I visited in 2019, and not greater than it was in 1895. That last statistic is especially startling when you consider the growth of the country’s population. In 1895 it had 1.5 million people, but it has over 10 million today.
Cuba’s agricultural failures would be hard to explain were it not Communist. Like most volcanic islands, it has rich soil, and it’s nearly as large as Pennsylvania. However, real calamity will come when its oil supplies run out, and that could happen in weeks.
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