YouTuber Luisito Comunica after his visit to Cuba: "Few countries have managed to surprise me so much."

After weeks of waiting, the first video by the Mexican YouTuber Luisito Comunica about his controversial trip to Cuba is finally available.

It's like taking a trip decades into the past; everything looks as if we are in another era, from the cars seen driving down the streets, the architecture of the buildings, to the fact that most official procedures are still carried out with paper and pen, and getting many things done is an extremely complicated mission,” he asserts right at the beginning of his report.

"Few countries have managed to surprise me so much", the visibly astonished YouTuber confesses as he confronts the reality before his eyes.

"The country is full of lovely, warm, friendly people, chatting everywhere; everyone on the street jokes with you, engages in conversation, and tells you about life and the situation. Above all, I must emphasize that Cubans are a resilient society because life in this country is difficult; there’s no other way to say it. Everything, absolutely everything, is extremely complicated. If you think certain things in your country are hard, multiply them by 10," added the video creator.

For Luisito Comunica, it is hard to understand, for example, that "resources are scarce, getting gasoline is a whole mission, the electricity goes out very often, it's the most routine thing, in fact, in many places it is more common to not have electricity than to have it, and the quality of the phone and internet signal is not bad; it's terrible."

"It's a surreal experience, it feels like a city trapped in time", she says as she rides through the streets of Havana in an almendrón, and she can't help but be surprised to see sidecar motorcycles and "horse-drawn taxis" in other provinces of the country.

If something captures attention, it is the number of political posters: "The image of Fidel Castro remains very prominent." Without taking a stance, he spoke about both sides, those who justify Cuba's stagnation with the United States blockade and those who blame the dictatorship that has kept the country in misery for over 60 years.

A very tough moment in this video is when it approaches those areas of Havana that are not in the tourist zone, where the majority of the buildings are in poor condition and at risk of collapse.

Although some people refused to appear on camera, they left their testimonies in voice. A mother with two daughters recounted how she managed to live in a building at risk of collapsing and supposedly uninhabited because she has no home. The images showed their daily struggles, the garbage and waste surrounding them, the misery in which they live, without electricity for most of the day, cooking with charcoal or firewood, and how they have to relieve themselves in a bucket or bag to dispose of it later because the plumbing is blocked.

Hiding the faces of people, Luisito Comunica taught those who survive thanks to "diving," or in other words, rummaging through the trash.

The situation in the banks, the lack of cash, how money works on the island, the official and unofficial exchange rates, the rationing booklet, the operation of cinemas, public transportation, the alarming migration in recent years, and problems with the internet are just some of the topics addressed in his first work about the island.

The report by Lusito Comunica depicts a Cuba that is a kind of parallel reality when compared to other countries around the world, the backwardness in every sense is so pronounced that it seems to be pulled from someone's imagination rather than something tangible at every step you take.

Frequently asked questions about Luisito Comunica's trip to Cuba