🇨🇺 Cuba

Cuba is the Caribbean's largest island, home to 11 million people with a GDP estimated at $100 billion (though official statistics are unreliable). The country has been under communist rule since 1959 and under US embargo since 1962 — the longest trade embargo in modern history. Cuba's healthcare system is legendary: it has more doctors per capita than any country (8.4 per 1,000 people) and exports medical services to dozens of countries. Havana's crumbling colonial architecture and 1950s American cars are frozen-in-time tourist attractions. The country is experiencing its worst economic crisis in 30 years, with shortages of food, fuel, and medicine driving unprecedented emigration.

Tourism, remittances, medical service exports, and nickel mining are the main revenue sources. Venezuela's economic collapse cut off Cuba's subsidized oil supply, devastating the economy. Sugar, once the backbone, has collapsed — production hit a 100-year low recently. The dual currency system was unified in 2021, triggering inflation above 70%. The private sector is slowly expanding but remains heavily restricted.

Cuba has a 99.8% literacy rate — one of the highest in the world — achieved through a massive 1961 literacy campaign that sent 250,000 volunteers into the countryside. The country developed its own COVID vaccines (Abdala and Soberana), making it the smallest country to do so. Cuba's lung cancer vaccine, CIMAvax, is being studied by the US Roswell Park Cancer Institute.

Cuba's in a deep crisis with no obvious exit. The economic model is exhausted, emigration is accelerating, and the political system shows no appetite for the reforms needed. Something has to give.