The Libreta Diaries

Or How Cuba Ran Out of Revolution

Dear Readers and Subscribers,

Last week, you were introduced to and read about my personal adventures in Varadero and La Havana, Cuba, in the 1990’s. You can review the first chapter and subsequent ones below:

Fast forward to 2025.

This is not the Cuba I remember.
It is not the island I wandered through in the mid-1990s, in those first fragile years after the fall of the Soviet bloc. When Fidel’s revolution, bruised but intact, still pulsed through the broken streets of La Havana.

Back then, the libreta still meant something. The food was humble, people lined up, yes—but they ate. There was pride in the struggle, not just exhaustion.

Today’s Cuba, feels hollowed out. The revolution hasn't fallen, it’s been rationed into irrelevance. And now, with Washington reviving embargo politics for the cameras, Havana is left surviving on memory and bureaucracy.

Let’s begin

Prologue: Hasta la Vista, Havana!

<Washington, D.C.> Where Policy Is Made Up and the Laws Don’t Matter