After 66 years, Cuba's regime faces reckoningFidel Castro and his communist band of brothers have had a good long run in power (66 years), but they have run out of road. The ensuing "Special Period in Time of Peace" spanned the 1990s and brought great hardship to ordinary people -- rationing, blackouts, even severe food shortages -- but the economy stabilised (at a permanently lower level of prosperity) by 2000. At that point, 40% of the population would probably still have fought to defend the regime, at least if the enemy was the United States. A more likely outcome is a deal of the sort that Mr Trump likes, as close as possible to the Venezuelan template. Early in the Special Period, I took a large chunk of my extended family to Cuba.

Source: Bangkok Post February 20, 2026 23:10 UTC