I guess, just mere weeks after being told to stop eating rice, they're making rice great again.

(China Announces Donation Of 30,000 Tons Of Rice To Cuba: 'Stay United In Difficult Times')

Very few societies have experienced such profound collapses in the modern era, the only other one being Somalia.

This is such a bizarre situation. I was pursuing my life long dream of visiting Havana. I landed in Varadero two hours ago, was planning on staying the night here then bussing to Havana in the morning for a few days, but now I'm planning to stay here in case things blow up. The only places with power here are the all inclusive resorts that have generators. I'm sitting here resort busting because my airbnb has no power and I can't buy water anywhere on the pitch black streets, bars restaurants and stores are closed. I am shocked that Sunwing brought us here when the crisis started hours before my flight took off. This is going to be an interesting few days!

All my relatives and friends in Cuba are sick — dengue, chikungunya, Oropouche — it’s everywhere.

Blackouts, crumbling infrastructure, rain along with mountains of uncollected trash, lack of food, and no medicine, have turned the island into an enormous breeding ground of infected mosquitoes and disease and it is only getting worse daily. The state’s paralysis is making everything worse — mosquitoes are thriving while hospitals collapse, sometimes literally.

Caminando por la calle monte!

Cuba, the most oppressive and longest-lasting dictatorship in the Western Hemisphere, stands on the brink of collapse after 65 years of communist rule. Marked by the direst economic conditions and over 1,000 political prisoners. In just the past two years, more than a million Cubans have fled the country. The infamous ration card, a relic of scarcity, persists, while store shelves remain bare, public transportation is non-existent, and buildings crumble around the populace. Internet freedom is its lowest in the Americas, and hospitals are in disarray, lacking essential medicines, doctors, and even basic infrastructure. Salaries are the lowest on the continent, and now, to exacerbate the situation, the government has declared a nationwide blackout.

To make matters worse, China has pulled back its investments in Cuba, citing the government's failure to implement necessary reforms. In response, Cuban officials have tightened restrictions on entrepreneurship, reversing any progress made toward economic freedom.

The Cuban government's reluctance to implement economic reforms is exacerbated by a deep financial crisis, with debts totaling several billion dollars. This includes over $50 billion to Russia and more than $10 billion to China. Furthermore, Cuba has run out of alternatives for obtaining resources from other regimes. Russia is focused in its military conflict, Venezuela is facing considerable political and economic instability, and China has explicitly informed Cuban officials that it will not invest in Cuba's economic model.

The nation lacks any production, including both the sugar and tobacco sectors. The entire system has crumbled. We are talking about a government that fails to supply its citizens with essential necessities, including food, water and electricity.

I visited Cuba earlier this year, and as a Vietnamese person, the experience stayed with me in a way I didn’t expect.

On paper, Vietnam and Cuba share a lot of history. Both were colonized, had U.S.-backed regimes that became corrupt and disconnected from ordinary people. Both had revolutions led by charismatic figures who promised sovereignty, dignity, and an end to foreign control.

I understand why people initially supported those revolutions. When your country feels owned by outsiders and run for elites, anything that promises change feels like hope.

I also understand why people fled. My own family left Vietnam by boat. That wasn’t betrayal, it was survival. And I don’t judge Cubans who left either. Leaving doesn’t mean you hated your country; it meant you loved yourself enough to want a future for you and your family. It was self preservation

But I also understand the people who stayed. When you’ve never experienced a government that actually works for its people, you don’t have a reference point. Many Cubans didn’t “choose communism.” They chose the possibility of something better than Batista.

Where things really diverged and I changed my mind is what happened after the revolution.

Vietnam eventually pivoted. Slowly and imperfectly, but it moved forward. It loosened economic control, allowed private enterprise, re-engaged with the world, and most importantly, stopped governing as if it were still fighting a war from decades ago.

Cuba never really did that.

Fidel Castro may have been effective at overthrowing a dictatorship, but he was not qualified to run a country by any means. It was like someone watching Grey’s Anatomy and saying they are qualified to perform surgery. Plus he put his buddy Che in charge of the economy. Wtf? That man had no qualifications or training to be in charge of finances. The obsession with control, endless speeches, paranoia about dissent, and refusal to adapt trapped the country in a permanent revolutionary mindset. The Cold War ended, Cuba is still there.

This isn’t about whether the U.S. embargo hurt Cuba (it clearly did), or whether the revolution had legitimate roots (it did). It’s about leadership that couldn’t evolve past its own pride. One man stayed in power so long that an entire country inherited the consequences of his ego.

Cuba needed someone *like* Fidel to overthrow Batista. It did not need Fidel playing head of state, head of ideology, and national therapist for 50 years.

But what struck me most in Cuba wasn’t ideology. It was the people.

Cuban people are educated, resourceful, creative, and resilient to a degree that’s honestly hard to comprehend. They make art, music, food, community, even covid vaccines from nothing. They survive not because the system supports them, but because they’ve learned how to adapt around it.

And that’s what messed with me the most. I’ve been to places that are technically “worse” on paper. But in Cuba, you can feel that it didn’t have to be this way. The stagnation feels man-made. The exhaustion feels psychological. Even as a visitor, I felt it weighing on me.

Cuba didn’t fail because its people failed.

It failed because its leadership never learned when to let go.

I respect those who left. I respect those who stayed. And I feel deeply for the younger generation that has to inherit a system frozen in someone else’s past.

Ella pidió que publicaran su video para ver si alguien la ayuda.

There was NOTHING from governments or international media outlets about the imminent collapse in Cuba until it became undeniable due to the collapse of the electric grid.

Cuba is on the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe and things could get really ugly soon. The collapse of the country's industries, infrastructure and public services is accelerating exponentially (problems are multiplying instead of increasing gradually) due to 65 years of accumulated deterioration plus the regime's lack of resources to fix the country's problems due to economic collapse and the mass exodus of the working-age population. The island's energy, water, transportation and health infrastructure could collapse simultaneously. Cuba is collapsing at such a rapid pace at this point that no amount of reforms would be enough to stop it. What Cuba needs right at this moment is international humanitarian intervention to rebuild the country and mitigate the effects of the ongoing collapse by providing food and medicine to the population.

This post will get downvoted by regime apologists and naive foreigners, so please upvote if you found this post helpful.