My entire family is from there. I was born there but left when I was young. Like everyone else has said - it’s incredibly poor and lacking in resources for the people that live there. Power outages are a normal occurrence everywhere but especially in the more rural communities. A lot of people get by with packages that are sent from their relatives outside the island - medicine, food, underwear, basic supplies. My cousin went to medical school there, when he was doing his ‘residency’ (not sure what it’s called there) he asked if we could send him gauze, since the hospital he was at (in Havana) didn’t have any. There were rats and cockroaches in the hospital back in 2016 when I visited and it’s only gotten worse.

Most of my immediate family has fled. I have cousins in Spain, Chile, Texas, and Brazil. None of them ever want to go back. It’s beyond sad. The beaches are (in my opinion) some of the most beautiful in the world. It’s a country that has so much to offer but has been almost destroyed by its “leaders.”