Erika Barris

So a few years after the Soviet Union broke up and Cuba no longer had its help, Cuba, for the first time in decades, begrudgingly tried basically hanging out with some capitalist frenemies.

In 1993, Cuba started its first experiment in capitalism since the revolution.

I'm going to call it Caribbean communism, but with a teeny tiny capitalist exception.

Ricardo says this was supposed to be temporary.

But it was a big deal.

Yes.

Before, everyone was employed by Cuba.

But now, Cubans could be self-employed, have their own businesses.

In the U.S., this made sense.

Big news.

Basically, anything meaningful to a business was not up to you.

It was up to the state.

So this was a tiny first move.

The number of people working in small businesses was really small.

Cuba further developed its relationship with China.

But the biggest alliance that Cuba made during this time was with Venezuela, the land of oil.

Ricardo says in the year 2000, Venezuela and Cuba agreed to their own sort of trade deal.

Teachers, doctors, also boxing and baseball coaches.

In the early 2000s, Ricardo got a job teaching economics in Havana.

As an academic, he was able to visit Europe and the U.S.