Cuba Beneath the Surface: Power, Survival and the Struggle for Prosperity
Cuba has endured crises that would have overwhelmed many societies. But endurance is not the same as prosperity. What would allow its people to build more secure lives, put their skills to productive use and plan beyond the next interruption?
In Cuba Beneath the Surface, economist, international investor and author Dr Gil Feiler examines the distance between survival and renewal. Several visits to Cuba and conversations with its people provide the personal starting point for an inquiry into the institutions, resources and decisions shaping everyday life.
A brief historical opening leads into an extended examination of modern Cuba: economic power, sanctions, household budgets, private enterprise, electricity, food, housing, health care, music, tourism and migration. Classic cars become working assets with maintenance bills. Overseas family support becomes a relationship between two household budgets. Public achievements are considered alongside the resources and freedoms needed to sustain them.
The book distinguishes external pressure from domestic responsibility without assuming that either can explain every outcome. It asks what earlier reforms left unresolved and which lessons from other countries could be useful under Cuba's particular conditions.
Its final chapters compare three conditional futures: continued constrained adaptation, broader reform with political continuity, and negotiated institutional change. Rather than predict a date for transformation, they identify the commitments, protections and practical improvements each path would require.
At the centre are the people whose ingenuity has kept daily life functioning, and the possibility of a future that asks less of their endurance.
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