Images by Vanessa Harper (VH), Alberto Morales (AM), and Lara Ortiz (LO) Words by Cinda Sherman
Cuba is both ugly and beautiful. It is ravaged with despair and neglect, yet it is vibrant and alive with promise. This all serves to make Cuba complicated.
You can read about Cuba in the news, but you can’t quite capture its complexity until you’re there on the ground in real time experiencing Cuba’s everyday contradictions. The country has been in chronic distress since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and today, the island is suffocating in the wake of the unparalleled trials and tribulations of the past four years.
It’s been almost 10 years since President Obama began the process of breaking down decades of official U.S. policy by reestablishing diplomatic relations with Cuba in 2016—effectively making travel to Cuba under a general license possible for U.S. citizens. The economy boomed in the years that followed with American tourists bringing in a surge of much-needed dollars. There was also an emergence of a new-found cultural exchange with the Cuban people. But two things happened that sent Cuba into a tailspin, forcing the island backwards and into a downward spiral that rivaled the Special Period challenges of the 1990s.
Prior to leaving office in 2019, President Trump placed Cuba back on the state sponsors of terrorism list, causing confusion about the legality of American travel to Cuba (however, it’s still legal to travel to Cuba!) and, as a by-product, penalizing citizens of other countries for visiting Cuba by revoking their ESTA (Electronic System for Travel Authorization) if they step foot on the island. Coupled with Cuba’s insurmountable global debt, high inflation, incessant blackouts, an imploding healthcare system, and the mass exodus of almost half a million Cubans across the U.S.-Mexico border in the past 24 months, it’s no wonder the Cuban people are facing unprecedented precarity.
