Nick Fountain

And now with everything going on, it's even worse.

He says he hasn't even had a paying customer this year.

And I'm Nick Fountain.

Yasser's parents grew up in communist Cuba, where the state was in charge of everything.

And now Yasser can't even plan for a phone call, much less run a business.

It's complicated, he said.

This is Ricardo Torres, an economist who we can speak with on the phone right now because he does have regular Internet and cell service.

He's in Washington, D.C.

He works at American University.

Before 1959, Cuba was run by a dictator, and American companies ran most of Cuba's sugar fields and refineries, railroads, hotels, casinos.

Then Cuban rebels overthrew the government and made Cuba into a socialist communist country.

So at the outset, Cuba's economic strategy was lean on its communist friends, its compadres.

The government gave people little ration books, little paper books that told them how much of what kind of food a person or a family could get in a given month at a given store.

They also got access to an island 90 miles away from their mortal enemy, the United States.

Right.

And those post-Soviet countries stopped paying top dollar for Cuban exports.

And sending Cuba cheap oil.

But Ricardo says many Cubans still believed in the revolutionary dream.

They didn't have material reserves, but they did have faith, what he calls moral reserves.

And this was a moment where maybe Cuba had to reassess its strategy.