Nick Fountain

Cheap oil from Venezuela, cheap solar panels from China.

Cubans could also buy sneakers or dishwashers or cosmetics or...

Bug spray from the U.S.

And trouble did come for tourism in Cuba.

Three big shocks to the industry.

Third shock to this new tourism-based growth engine?

The pandemic.

Travel just stopped.

Cuba had a new president by then, and he tried to fix the country's ailing economy.

He said those small businesses we've allowed, now those can get even bigger.

Companies can hire more employees, up to 100.

There were protests.

People said the government wasn't taking care of their needs.

Ricardo says that people were running out of that thing he called moral reserves, their faith that the Cuban experiment could ever work.

He was part of the biggest wave of migration out of Cuba yet.

According to one estimate, nearly three million people have left since 2020, a quarter of the population.

And then at the start of this year, the U.S.

captured the president of Venezuela and essentially took over its oil industry.

So that lifeline Cuba was getting from its best compadre was yanked away.

Ricardo says it seems Cuba is at the mercy of the U.S.