No water or electricity, and children begging in streets filled with rubbish – but this is why I won’t leave Cuba

The Guardian ^ | 13 Feb 2026 | Ruaridh Nicoll

[Rummyfan]

elix Valdés García was nine years old when the revolutionaries came to blow up his trees. It was the verge of the 1970s and his father, Felin, was losing the family farm to Cuba’s 10-year-old communist regime. A push called the Revolutionary Offensive was under way, mobilising the people to sow, clean and harvest 10m tonnes of sugar cane in an effort to make Cuba financially independent. The land needed to be cleared.

For decades the family had nurtured their 800 hectares of rich loam alongside the meandering Sagua River. Eight couples, all related, worked the fields, while Felix and his sister had fruitful adventures among the royal palms, avocado, mango and magnificent ceiba.

“The sappers arrived,” Felix writes in his family memoir. “A gang of agile men who opened holes in the roots and placed charges of dynamite. There was a terrible roar and the trees flew into the sky, defying gravity, then fell shuddering with broken branches.”

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TOPICS: News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: cuba; regime

[Rummyfan]

It's a heartbreaking read..... but the people portrayed still believe in The Revolution! After sixty plus years of oppression, hardship, penuriousness, and economic destruction. What can you do with such to convince them?!

And yeah, it's The Guardian I know.

[butlerweave]

First I thought it was about NYC

[Bikkuri]

Considering that his was written/posted by communist The Guardian....

[Jonty30]

Those people think nobody in the world has it better off. They basically need to be freed in order to understand.

However, liberals are prone to needing death camps before they do learn.

[lgjhn23]

“..First I thought it was about NYC,,,”

The way they’re going, it won’t be long....

[DAC21]

“Those people think nobody in the world has it better off. They basically need to be freed in order to understand”

Kind of like our children and public schools.

[pterional]

Cuba is now a bay of pigs.

[butlerweave]

The Boot has been on the Cuban’s neck so long they have no idea what to do

[kawhill]

I’ve heard they have some nice old cars down there.

[plain talk]

“It’s a heartbreaking read..... but the people portrayed still believe in The Revolution!”

So do people in this country and they haven’t even experienced what Cubans have experienced.

[lgjhn23]

“...The Boot has been on the Cuban’s neck so long they have no idea what to do...”

It’s analogous to constantly beating one’s head against the wall. When one finally stops, one realizizes that it actually feels good.

[ClearCase_guy]

I have seen plenty of videos on YouTube of people from North Korea who come to America and are amazed at everything. The land, the lawns, the big houses, the supermarkets, the cars, the television, everything. Basically, “We thought we had it good. We thought America was backward. But in reality we were living like animals.”

The people in Cuba might like their situation right now, but if they are allowed to meld with the real world, they will sing a different tune.

[EvilCapitalist]

Give Mamdani a few years. Once other people’s money runs out, it will be.

[Da Coyote]

When Cuba gets rid of slimy inept leftists (such as Guardian ‘journalists’), the place will become heaven on earth.

[Skywise]

Man what a drek article and writer.

ooo if it weren’t for the colonialism and white man greed for lust and avarice this communist utopia would’ve worked so awesomely awesome because it was... when they forced all the people into slavery to make money for the state that’s really a good thing because they turned out doctors and artists and philosophers... but nobody that wanted to work and till until forced to.

The article outright pooh poohs the people that FIX THE CARS FOR MONEY! (He’s not emaciated!)

And to their dying breath they say “not troo communism”

[oldasrocks]

Well they should of cut down the trees to put in solar farms like we do here.

[rlmorel]

"...For those the revolution educated, the sad last act of the great experiment appears to be extraordinary individual tragedies. Says Hansing, “For many of the Cubans I know, these are the questions: what have I lived through? What was all that for? What was my life?”

Reading this article, my father-in-law Felix said sadly, “You [he meant western Europeans, Americans] use communism as a hammer, but to me it remains a beautiful idea – perhaps the most beautiful idea.”..."

That is why they are where they are today. Because of indocrinatated retards who were inculcated with the beauty of Communism, and don't know how to get that stupidity out of their thick rock-hard heads..

I have known more that a few Cuban expatriates, and one, a woman, was the wife of my boss, and someone I respected. She could barely avoid spitting on the floor whenever she heard the name of Castro. She was among the last they actually let leave (I think around 1962) as a 10 year old girl. After that, the only way out for the majority of people was on a raft.

It is a terrible, terrible thing. We saw what Communism had done to the Eastern Bloc when it fell, the extraordinary environmental damage, because that is what tyrants do.

I have heard that once upon a time, Cuba had the most beautiful beaches in the world. I have often wondered how differently things might be for them had they not been taken over by Communists, but instead, had become (as it was before the Revolution) a "playground for the rich". (Today, that would mean anyone who goes to any Caribbean destination, which is any American or other peoples around the world who can afford to get there)

Recently, I was casting about on Prime for something to watch, and came across a movie called "I Am Cuba", and out of curiosity, watched it.

Shot as anti-western propaganda by the Soviets, the cinematography is beautiful, but the propaganda and messaging is ham-handed to the point of ridicule. Almost as if it were a parody of Soviet propaganda. But when it was shot in the Sixties, the Communists had not managed to destroy it all.

[Veto!]

Yep, plenty of old cars and they also have genius mechanics to keep them running.

I spent four days in Cuba about 30 years ago. Illegal to go but three friends and I went after finding an American man online who said he could arrange a few days in Havana for a reasonable pprice. We decided to take a chance, and did indeed stay at fab hotel, walked around Havana unafraid. Why should we be afraid with government spys following us?

Cubans were absolutely thrilled to see Americans, but many were afraid to talk to us because spies would turn them in.

Even the spies were OK. One man in our group and I decided to find Havana’s Chinatown. Got a cab there, but there were zero cabs in Chinatown to take us back to hotel. Then guess what? Car from hotel driven by their “employees” pulled up and very nicely took us back.

We all brought arge suitcases full of old but servieable clothes to leave at our hotel, girls who worked there were thrilled with old but nice garments.

[Pete from Shawnee Mission]

Before Casto Cuba could feed itself. Castro bulldozed all the farms and plowed it all over to raise sugarcane, and tobacco. this is what central planners do.

Now, they have to import food and export soldiers and doctors and cuban women sell themselves to tourists so they can eat. They lost fewer children in childbirth than any western hemisphere country, now they are the lowest. Socialism.

Maybe they should “Maduro” Cuba and its leaders and start to rebuild Cuba.

[BansheeBill]

I’ve heard they have some nice old cars down there.

The cars look nice from a distance but usually have cobbled togethered drivetrains using old Russian Lada engines (often diesel) and rear ends from whatever junker they could find. The installations were usually crude using scrap iron for mounts and stick welding. A couple of auto magazines traveled down there to look into importing some cars to restore and were disappointed in what they found.