I sit down to begin part III of this column on Oct. 26, 60 years to the day when Fidel Castro wrote a letter to Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, warning him of an imminent U.S. attack, potentially a "full invasion," and encouraging the Soviet Union to strike first with nuclear missiles.

The United States did not strike first, nor did the Soviets, much to Castro's chagrin. Diplomacy averted nuclear war; in fact, since the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, no country has launched a nuclear attack on any other nation. Russian President Vladimir Putin has spent the last several months, however, threatening to use nuclear weapons against Ukraine.

CUBA'S WORSENING ECONOMIC CRISIS

2021 was one of Cuba's worst economic years since the start of the revolution. With a 70%-plus rate of inflation, the island's "misery index" (inflation and unemployment combined) was the world's highest at 1,278, followed by Venezuela (774) and Sudan (397). Unable to pay its foreign debt of over 20 billion U.S. dollars, Cuba reached an agreement with the Paris Club creditor nations to postpone payments for a year and in February 2022 (two days before invading Ukraine), Russia deferred 2.3 billion dollars' worth of debt repayments until 2027.

The waning of the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting reopening of Cuba to international tourism in November 2021 were expected to bring economic stability, if not recovery; but other developments — skyrocketing oil and grain costs stemming from the war in Ukraine, a crumbling infrastructure and the destructive effects of hurricanes Fiona and Ian in September 2022 — have caused further economic damage, inflicting additional suffering on the population.

The Cuban government lacks the cash and credit to purchase essential goods to cover the population's most basic needs: food, medicine, electricity, transportation and safe housing.

Cuba is suffering food scarcities reminiscent of the worst times of the so-called Special Period in 1993 and 1994. Shortages of flour have moved the government to resort to producing cassava bread, the staple of the Pre-Columbian indigenous diet. Independent vendors of pizzas and sandwiches are no longer allowed to sell those foods. Inspired by liberation-theologian-turned-nutritionist-of-misery Frei Betto, the Cuban government is pushing recipes that include fried potato and carrot skins and chunks of trunks of banana trees, which are sold wrapped in cellophane in government stores.

Cubans are going hungry; a steady stream of videos uploaded to social media shows them foraging for scraps in trash containers and the heaps of assorted rubbish piling up on city sidewalks. Other videos document the dilapidated and filthy state of hospital facilities, which are increasingly devoid of functioning equipment. And to think that many around the world, including many fellow Cuban scholars, continue to perpetuate the myth that Cuba is a global medical power.

Medicine, as in the exportation of Cuba-trained doctors, has been for decades a source of hard currency. The Economist reported in 2020 that 28,000 Cuban doctors were being rented to foreign countries. This August, despite suffering a scarcity of doctors, Cuba announced that it would send 500 physicians to the Calabria region of Italy in return for $3,500 per month (with the doctors receiving only $700 of that amount).

A CRUMBLING INFRASTRUCTURE

The Cuban regime has neglected the island's infrastructure by deferring maintenance for decades. As a result, streets and roads are scarred with potholes and buildings are collapsing by the dozen. The energy infrastructure has suffered serious damage, most notably the Aug. 5 explosion of eight large oil tanks on the island's only supertanker port in Matanzas. Badly needed millions of barrels of oil burned for four days. Venezuela offered to help reconstruct the facilities and Russia dispatched a tanker with 70 million dollars' worth of oil.

Even more vulnerable is the island's electric grid. Hurricane Ian, which hit Cuba with winds of over 125 miles per hour on Sept. 27, produced an island-wide blackout. Parts of western Cuba endured several days without electricity, and long periods of blackout have plagued the island since.

Under the cover of darkness, thousands of Cubans have staged mass protests almost every night. That is the subject of this column's next part.

Luis Martinez-Fernandez is the author of "Revolutionary Cuba: A History" and the forthcoming book "When the World Turned Upside Down: Politics, Culture, and the Unimaginable Evenest of 2019-2022." Readers can reach him at LMF_Column@yahoo.com. To find out more about Luis Martinez-Fernandez and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www. creators.com.

Photo credit: cubajuan at Pixabay