Jon Lee Anderson, journalist for The New Yorker and biographer of Che Guevara, described the situation in Cuba on Saturday as "one of the most severe crises, perhaps even more so than the one in the 1990s" during a talk at the Internazionale journalism festival in Ferrara, Italy, interviewed by journalist Camilla Desideri.
The diagnosis carries special weight depending on who issues it: Anderson is not a hostile critic of Castroism, but rather a journalist who had privileged access to Cuban government archives to write his biography of Che, and who has covered the island for decades from a compassionate perspective. For someone with that profile to speak before the progressive European audience at the Internazionale festival—in its 20th edition—with such starkness about the Cuban collapse is, in itself, news.
The most striking piece of information from the talk was about the exodus: “20% of the population has left. Many young people, many trained professionals like the surgeons who have moved to Miami,” stated Anderson. The journalist had previously published a report in March 2026 titled “Is Cuba Next?” in The New Yorker, where he described Havana as “almost deserted” and noted that approximately one in five Cubans has left the island since 2021.
These figures are supported by available data: between 2021 and 2024, nearly 1.79 million Cubans would have left, according to the study by demographer Juan Carlos Albizu-Campos, and half of those who emigrate are young people.
Anderson also warned of a risk that the regime would never acknowledge: that Cuba, historically "the safest country in the Western Hemisphere alongside Canada," could descend into organized crime and the formation of mafia groups. This is not an abstract warning: the Cuban Observatory for Citizen Audit recorded a 115% increase in verified crimes during 2025, with nearly 200 reports of drug trafficking in the first half of that year.
Regarding the causes of the crisis, Anderson pointed to Washington as the main external factor: "The biggest external factor that has led to the crisis on the island is the United States. Trump intended to do with Cuba what he did with Venezuela. The Cubans are trapped in a geopolitical corner and can no longer rely on the allies they had during Fidel Castro's time." The capture of Nicolás Maduro on January 3, 2026, allowed for the cutting off of Venezuelan oil supplies to the island, exacerbating an already chronic energy crisis.
However, that interpretation overlooks the internal causes that the regime itself has generated: GAESA's control over the economy, the lack of investment in electrical infrastructure, and a cumulative decline in GDP of around 23% since 2019, which has nothing to do with the U.S. embargo.
Anderson also recalled Miguel Díaz-Canel's repressive response to the protests on July 11, 2021: "Covid reduced tourism on the island by 50%. In 2021, sixty Cuban cities rebelled, with a series of protests demanding a change of regime, to which the government responded with harsh repression and long prison sentences for many." More than 1,400 people were detained; in November 2024, the organization Justicia 11J estimated that 554 remained incarcerated.
Regarding the immediate future, Anderson was clear: everything depends on the midterm elections in the U.S. on November 3. "After the elections, it will be known whether the MAGA will continue to hold the majority or if the more reasonable Democrats will manage to change something," he said. Regarding Marco Rubio, he pointed out that the Cuban-American Secretary of State "seems willing to adopt a more moderate approach" in his dialogue with the island, although "he has been strongly challenged by the far-right factions in Florida."
Older Cubans, Anderson concluded, "continue to believe that Cuba was and can return to being an idyllic place, while young people do not see it that way." With one in five citizens already outside the island, that generational gap may be irreversible.
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