Dark times for Cuba’s economic experiment

Cuba is in its worst crisis in decades, caught between two contradictory economic strategies that have sustained it for over sixty years—relying on communist allies for subsidized oil and flirting with capitalism through tourism and small private businesses. Now both lifelines are being severed simultaneously: the United States has blocked nearly all oil shipments since January 2025, causing nationwide blackouts that last days, while the tourism industry that powered Cuba's recent mini-boom has collapsed. Through voice notes from Cubans living through the crisis and interviews with economist Ricardo Torres, hosts Erika Beras and Nick Fountain trace the island's long, winding economic experiment from the 1959 revolution to the present, revealing how a country that once had the basics covered for everyone now has people searching through trash cans for food.

0:19Life Under Blackout: Voice Notes from Havana

The episode opens with the human reality of Cuba's current crisis, conveyed through voice messages that Cubans recorded on their phones during the few hours each day when electricity is available. Farmer Lady Casamiro told the hosts she can only use her phone for about two hours daily and has no gas to reach the other farmers she works with. A hotel manager named Garcia described the rhythm of survival: when the power goes out, you keep the refrigerator closed and wait; when it comes back on, often in the middle of the night, you jump into action—cooking, working on computers, charging phones.

The central figure in these voice notes is Yasser Gonzalez Cabrera, who runs a bicycle tour business in Havana. He agreed to record extended audio messages answering the hosts' questions, and his voice reveals the emotional toll of the crisis. Sometimes birds sing in the background as he walks through his neighborhood; other times, he records from his kitchen while cooking. But then there are messages where he sounds like he's sitting alone in the dark. He told the hosts he worries about his parents, who live in more rural areas where the government prioritizes electricity for cities—his mother now goes to bed at seven when the sun goes down.

At the height of his business, Yasser was leading bike tours for about 400 tourists per month. Last year, he had only 25 customers total. This year, he hasn't had a single paying customer. "I always used to see a lot of potential for my work in Cuba," he said in one message. "But now he doesn't see any future," the hosts summarize. The crisis has exposed how completely Cuba's recent economic experiment depended on two external factors: oil from allies and tourists from the United States and elsewhere.

7:09The Revolution and the Soviet Lifeline

To understand how Cuba arrived at this moment, the hosts turn to Ricardo Torres, an economist born and raised in Cuba who now works at American University in Washington, D.C. Torres learned about the 1959 revolution in elementary school, where teachers told the heroic story of Fidel Castro's rebels overthrowing a dictator. Before the revolution, American companies ran most of Cuba's sugar fields, refineries, railroads, hotels, and casinos. After the rebels took power and declared Cuba a socialist-communist country, the United States—just 90 miles away—imposed what became the mother of all embargoes, banning virtually all exports from the US to Cuba.

In response, Cuba adopted a 100% communist economic model. The government employed everyone, appointed people to jobs, set wages, and owned everything. Families received little ration books that specified how much of each food item they could get each month at designated stores. The government controlled the tobacco and sugar industries. For everything else Cuba needed—especially oil—it relied on its most powerful communist ally, the Soviet Union. The Soviets bought Cuban goods for more than they were worth and sold Cuba oil for less than it was worth, in exchange for a strategic outpost 90 miles from their mortal enemy.

For a few decades, this arrangement worked. Cuba was poor, but even the poorest had shelter, sufficient food through rationing, free education, and free healthcare. Torres notes that the system developed strong health and education systems with Soviet help. But in 1991, the Soviet Union dissolved, and the post-Soviet countries stopped paying top dollar for Cuban exports and sending cheap oil. The result was devastating: Cuba's GDP sank by 35%, food became scarce, and people began fleeing—some building rafts from whatever materials they could find to float to the United States.

10:09The Special Period and the First Capitalist Experiment

The early 1990s were called "the special period," a euphemism for what was actually a catastrophic economic collapse. Torres was ten years old when the Soviet Union disappeared, and he remembers that many Cubans still believed in the revolutionary dream. They had what he calls "moral reserves"—faith that socialism worked and that Cuba had simply been abandoned by traitorous allies. "We'll figure it out and we'll go back to that period of well-being," people told themselves.

By then, Torres had gotten his hands on an old Soviet economics textbook that extolled communist virtues and highlighted capitalist inequalities. But he was starting to wonder: if communism was so great, why did the Soviet Union abandon it? "Perhaps reality is a little bit different from what I saw in the book," he realized. This was the moment Cuba had to reassess its strategy.

In 1993, Cuba launched its first experiment with capitalism since the revolution—what the hosts call "Caribbean Communism with a teeny, tiny capitalist exception." For the first time, Cubans could be self-employed and own their own businesses. But the restrictions were severe: employees had to be family members, you could only hire a limited number, and the state controlled prices, production decisions, and everything else meaningful to running a business. The number of people working in small businesses remained below 1%. Cuba tried other small experiments—a limited tourism industry, a second currency pegged to the dollar—but nothing pulled the country out of crisis.

So Cuba turned back to its communist allies, deepening relationships with China (which sent about a million bikes to deal with fuel shortages) and, most importantly, Venezuela. In a famous speech, Hugo Chavez stood in Havana praising Fidel Castro and declaring that US free trade ideals were a return to colonialism. Around the year 2000, Venezuela and Cuba struck a deal: Cuba would send teachers, doctors, boxing and baseball coaches to Venezuela, and Venezuela would send oil. Venezuela took the role the Soviets had played, and Cuba's GDP began growing again.

15:17Raul Castro's Reforms and the Tourism Boom

When Fidel Castro fell ill, his brother Raul took over and began openly acknowledging that Cuba's economic system was failing. "We need to introduce some changes here," he said. The government expanded the tiny private sector, updating a list of allowed jobs to nearly 200 options—barbers, people who dress up as old Havana dandies for tourists, fortune tellers, specific musical acts for the growing tourism industry. Small businesses could now hire outside their families. But the government remained wary: "We want the private sector as long as it is a complement to state activity, but it cannot become more important than the state sector," Torres explains.

Around this time, President Obama began loosening restrictions on trade and travel with Cuba, and the private sector grew even larger. This was when Yasser, then in his twenties and working as a software engineer, got into bikes. He had heard about bike lanes and city-run bike rentals in the US and other places and thought, "We need to have that too." He started a company called Citicleta, hosting bike tours through the streets of Havana. Videos show him leading happy groups of tourists through the city.

In 2016, President Obama became the first US president to visit Cuba since the revolution, calling it "a historic opportunity to engage directly with the Cuban people." For Yasser's business, this was transformative. His customers came from everywhere—Germany, Holland, Australia, Canada, Mexico, Colombia, and the United States. Cuba was open for business. Chanel staged its first fashion show in Havana. The Fast and the Furious filmed there. The Rolling Stones held a monster concert in a country where rock and roll had once been restricted.

The tourism boom was driven partly by a romantic idea: "Cuba is changing so fast, it's no longer going to be a communist country in a few years, so we want to go there and see it before it changes completely," the hosts explain. Hundreds of thousands of Americans and their dollars went to Cuba. The hosts themselves visited during this period. Cuba had oil from Venezuela and tourists from the US—it was "boom tastic."

21:17Three Shocks That Destroyed the Boom

Cuba's economy had become dangerously specialized. Small economies tend to be more specialized than large ones, Torres notes, and when your main industry is affected, you're in trouble. Three big shocks hit Cuba's tourism-dependent growth engine in rapid succession.

The first shock was slow-moving: Venezuela's economy began falling apart starting in 2016, so the country sent less and less oil to Cuba. The second shock came when President Trump took office in 2017. Trump was not on board with warming US-Cuba relations, citing human rights violations and accusing Obama of propping up a repressive regime. He reinstated many economic sanctions and heavily restricted travel. The third shock was the pandemic: travel simply stopped.

"From boom to bust, but like without preparation or anticipation of any kind, like in a few months, all gone, almost all gone," Torres says. Both frenemies (the US) and compadres (Venezuela) were giving Cuba the cold shoulder. Cuba's new president tried to fix the economy by allowing small businesses to grow even larger—companies could now hire up to 100 employees. According to government statistics, nearly 10,000 such businesses were operating. Some Cubans made big money.

But even before this latest capitalist expansion, the loosening of controls had created a culture of haves and have-nots. During blackouts across much of the country, people in richer Havana neighborhoods would still be partying with lights on, eating lobsters. Cubans did not accept it. There were protests. People said the government wasn't taking care of their needs. Torres says people were running out of "moral reserves"—their faith that the Cuban experiment could ever work.

24:11The Exodus and the Final Blow

In 2021, Torres was preparing to go to the US for a fellowship. He looked around and decided that this time, he wasn't coming back. "I think I've contributed more than enough and I've sacrificed many things as well," he says. "So I said, okay, well it's time for a new beginning elsewhere." He became part of the biggest wave of migration out of Cuba yet: according to one estimate, nearly 3 million people have left since 2020—a quarter of the population.

When Torres visits now, he sees a country where the rich are getting richer—Teslas and Escalades on the streets—but the poor are also getting poorer in ways that were previously unthinkable. "I say with sorrow, I'm not proud about those beggars. People looking for food in trash cans. That's become very common." Trash piles up in the streets. That was the Cuba he saw on his last visit in 2025.

Then, at the start of 2025, the United States captured the president of Venezuela and essentially took over its oil industry. The Trump administration told Venezuela: no more oil for Cuba. They told other countries that might sell oil to Cuba, like Mexico, that if they did, they would face tariffs. For several months, no oil tanker reached Cuba. Then, just this week, President Trump changed his mind and allowed a tanker from Russia to land on Cuba's shores—a stark illustration of Cuba's dependence on US foreign policy whims.

Torres says the oil embargo has exposed all of Cuba's vulnerabilities at once. US foreign policy is choking off help from allies, and Cuba's big industry—tourism—requires tourists who either can't or won't visit a country whose antiquated Soviet electrical system cannot survive an oil embargo. "So now you are confronting your two real challenges," Torres says. "One is a dysfunctional economy at home, and then the US government 90 miles away. The only way out for Cuba is through a negotiation with the United States. And the US is turning out to be a very ferocious frenemy."

27:12Bikes as Joy, Not Just Necessity

Yasser's voice notes have grown increasingly hopeless. No one is paying for bike tours. But he still feels a responsibility to hold free biking events, teaching Cubans to ride. Even with the blackouts, he recently organized a big bike gathering in a park. He and others grilled food, played music, and people were grateful to have something during these days when they have nothing.

Yasser is trying to change how Cubans think about bikes. Many people around him see bicycles as tools of necessity—things shipped from China during the first oil shortage in the 1990s, a way to get around when there's no gas. He wants people to think of bikes as a way to engage with the world, to be together, something that can bring joy even during this very difficult time. It's a small act of resistance and hope in a country where both are increasingly hard to find.

Conclusion

This episode matters because it captures a pivotal moment in Cuba's long economic experiment—the simultaneous collapse of both strategies that have sustained the island for six decades. The communist-compadre model, which relied on subsidized oil from the Soviet Union and later Venezuela, is being strangled by US foreign policy. The capitalist-frenemy model, which depended on American tourists and a growing private sector, has been destroyed by sanctions, the pandemic, and now the oil crisis. What remains is a country where a quarter of the population has fled, where people search through trash for food, and where even the most entrepreneurial citizens like Yasser see no future. The episode's use of voice notes from Cubans living through the crisis gives it an intimacy and urgency that statistics alone cannot convey, while economist Ricardo Torres provides the historical framework to understand how a country with such promise arrived at such desperation.

Key takeaways

• Cuba's economy has depended for sixty years on two contradictory strategies: subsidized oil and trade from communist allies (the Soviet Union, then Venezuela) and limited capitalism through tourism and small private businesses.
• The current crisis began when the US blocked nearly all oil shipments to Cuba in January 2025, causing nationwide blackouts that can last more than a full day and crippling transportation, food delivery, healthcare, and communications.
• Three shocks destroyed Cuba's tourism-dependent growth: Venezuela's economic collapse (reducing oil shipments from 2016), Trump's reinstatement of sanctions (2017), and the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Nearly 3 million people—a quarter of Cuba's population—have left the country since 2020, the largest wave of migration in Cuban history.
• The US has effectively made both of Cuba's economic strategies impossible: it has blocked oil from allies and restricted the American tourists who powered the private sector.
• Economist Ricardo Torres, who left Cuba in 2021 after decades of trying to study and influence the economy from within, says the only way out is negotiation with the United States.
• Yasser Gonzalez Cabrera, a Havana bike tour operator who once hosted 400 tourists per month, has had zero paying customers this year and says he no longer sees a future for his work in Cuba.