What Was the Cuban Revolution? The Dream Is Dying but the Myth Will Persist

Just how and when the Cuban dictatorship will disappear is impossible to predict: a deal with Donald Trump to build hotels in Varader; the Marines welcomed by crowds on the Havana Malecón; popular protests overwhelming an army unwilling to fire on its people; a real, necessary and desirable peaceful transition to democratic rule and economic reform. Dozens of experts and pundits have lost their shirts betting on the regime’s demise since 1959. The convergence of new factors, however, suggests that Cuba has entered a new and probably terminal phase. Its economic collapse, the end of the Venezuelan subsidy, the Trump administration’s willingness and ability to squeeze it further, the growing discontent and protests of the island’s inhabitants, are all factors that were absent in prior decades.





