Nick Fountain

Like, are we going to survive sticking only to this communist compadres crowd?

But there were a lot of restrictions on this new private sector, these new private businesses.

Your employees had to be family members, and you could only have so many of them.

Less than 1%.

They tried a few other things, like a first small experiment in tourism, an experiment pegging a second currency to the dollar.

But none of that was enough to pull Cuba out of its economic crisis.

So Cuba turned back to its old friend group, went to its communist and socialist compadres for help.

For example, they got a great deal from China on about a million bikes to deal with all those fuel shortages.

There's this famous speech where Hugo Chavez is in Havana praising Fidel Castro, saying U.S.

free trade ideals are basically a return to colonialism.

And he talks about how Cuba is in the dreams of every Latin American revolutionary.

She's the one thing that Venezuela had that Cuba needed.

That was the trade.

When it came to oil, Venezuela took the role that the Soviets had played.

And soon, Cuba's GDP was growing faster.

Cuba was back from the brink.

The Cuban government has been infamously repressive of dissent.

But Ricardo says as an economist, he was able to access and study data and hold public discussions about the Cuban economy.

Kick this up a notch.

Raul Castro said, let's expand our teeny tiny private sector.