Why is Cuba in crisis?

March 19, 2026·48 min·3 clips

Cubans coined the term 'socialismo'—from 'socio,' meaning buddy—to describe how ration administrators sold half the milk allocation on the black market for personal profit.

1. Throughline examines Cuba's worst economic crisis in decades, triggered in part by the Trump administration's January 2025 blockade of Venezuelan oil, and traces its roots to the 1959 revolution. 2. Three main expert voices appear: Cuban-American historian Lillian Guerra (University of Florida), Latin American studies professor Maria de los Angeles Torres (University of Illinois Chicago), and journalist and lawyer Eloy Viera, who left Cuba in 2019 after multiple detentions and now writes for the independent outlet El Toque from Canada. 3. The episode frames its central question as a two-sided debate: was Cuba's crisis caused by 64 years of US sanctions, or by the communist government's internal repression and economic mismanagement? 4. In 1959, Fidel Castro came to power promising a democratic, capitalist, and socially progressive revolution against the US-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista; he was initially popular and not publicly communist. 5. Castro's first major act—a land reform in May 1959—broke up large foreign-owned sugar plantations, including US companies that operated as 'states within states' with private toll roads, ports, and company-store currencies; US companies lost $1.9 billion in investment when Castro nationalized all foreign-owned businesses in August 1960. 6. By December 1960, without ever publicly declaring himself a communist, Castro's government controlled 80% of the economy and had nationalized all medium and large-scale Cuban-owned businesses as well. 7. After the failed 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, the US imposed a full trade embargo in 1962, which cut off food, spare parts, clothing, and consumer goods that Cubans had relied on; a version of this embargo remains in place today. 8. Cuba's ration system was quickly corrupted: professor Guerra coined the term 'socialismo'—from 'socio,' Cuban slang for buddy—to describe how ration administrators diverted half the supply to the black market, making crony corruption 'a standard bearer of the communist regime.' 9. Castro criminalized behaviors deemed 'ideologically diversionary,' including listening to the Beatles, wearing jeans, being gay, and appreciating abstract art, enforcing conformity through neighborhood-level Committees for the Defense of the Revolution that spied on citizens. 10. In 1970, Castro mobilized doctors, teachers, and the entire workforce for a 10-million-ton sugar harvest (La Zafra de los Diez Millones) intended to make Cuba economically independent; the harvest failed to meet its goal, devastated other sectors of the economy, and resulted in 20% of the workforce not showing up to work in 1971. 11. After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Cuba entered what Castro called the 'Special Period': blackouts of up to 20 hours a day, Soviet food staples vanishing, people cooking communally outdoors, and 45,000 Cubans launching themselves into the ocean on homemade rafts in 1994 to reach Florida 90 miles away. 12. To survive, the Cuban government reversed its communist ideology, legalizing some private businesses and encouraging foreign investment—but structured foreign investment so that the Cuban government received workers' salaries (for example $500/month) while passing only a fraction to the workers ($50), keeping the rest. 13. Cuba turned to Venezuela under Hugo Chavez, exchanging Cuban doctors and professionals for 100,000 barrels of oil per day plus cash, with studies estimating the professional-leasing program brought billions of dollars annually to the Cuban government. 14. Cuba did not invest this money in infrastructure like the energy grid or roads; Torres describes crumbling roads with massive potholes as evidence of the government's misallocation of resources. 15. In 2008, 81-year-old Fidel Castro stepped down and handed power to his brother Raul; Torres notes Raul lacked Fidel's personal bond with the Cuban people, making criticism easier. 16. US President Obama pursued the 'Cuban Thaw' from 2009 to 2016, relaxing travel and trade restrictions, becoming the first US president to visit Cuba since 1928, and in 2015 allowing US companies to build Internet infrastructure in Cuba—resulting in the Cuban government opening public Wi-Fi hotspots. 17. Trump's 2016 election reversed the thaw, re-empowering Cuban hardliners; journalist Eloy Viera described it as 'one of the main or worst frustrations of my generation' after a period of growing openness. 18. In 2021, Cubans staged the largest public protests in decades, demanding food, medicine, and vaccines and calling for an end to communist rule; the government responded with a crackdown that detained approximately 1,000 people, hundreds of whom remain in prison. 19. Guerra argues the US embargo has paradoxically created profitable cottage industries for the Cuban military, which has become a stakeholder in keeping the embargo in place, complicating the simple narrative that only lifting the embargo would rescue the Cuban people. 20. Journalist Eloy Viera predicts something will change in 2026, but warns that the regime still controls the island tightly through internet filtering and ongoing repression, and that any change will ultimately come from Cubans themselves taking to the streets.

As heard by us

A careful history of Cuba's crisis, shaped by pressure, control, and unfinished revolution.

This episode follows Cuba's recurring crisis through U.S. pressure and the island's own political history. It moves from renewed Trump-era pressure on Cuba and long-running American efforts to force change there, then back to the Castro years, when the government cast youth as…

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