Not Your Grandma's Cuba: A New Day in the Caribbean
By Otaviano Canuto, Samuel George and Cornelius Fleischhaker
Today, July 20, 2015, Cuba and the United States reopened embassies in Washington and Havana for the first time in decades, marking a crucial step towards the normalization of relations. Yet, while much attention will be placed on these international developments, perhaps the most decisive changes for Cuba will be domestic.
Crippled by a US trade embargo since the 1960s, Cuba's underperforming centralized economy has long been propped up by a series of generous "sugar daddies", from Soviet Russia to chavista Venezuela.
But Soviet support collapsed with the Berlin Wall, and Caracas is running out of sugar. Havana may not be willing to give up on the revolution, but it cannot afford the status-quo.
On an island known for obstinacy, something has got to give.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/otaviano-canuto/not-your-granmas-cuba-a-n_b_7836372.html