What Cuban Teaches

Cuba is not just a case study in hardship; it’s a lesson on many things. But today I will focus on the aspect of improvisation, endurance, and human ingenuity.

What makes it compelling isn’t only the scarcity; it is also the way people adapt to it with creativity that becomes more impressive when you start looking closely. Cubans are the living evidence of how people solve problems when the usual systems fail, how communities share and how making do often becomes a skill in itself.

Here, the social interactions in the neighborhoods are unique. Often, neighbors are the ones who fulfill the functions of public services: they help others and take them to the hospital, feed the homeless elderly, or repair the common areas of the neighborhood.

In Cuba, survival often depends on flexibility, resourcefulness, and a willingness to rethink what “enough” looks like, which makes it a powerful lens for understanding endurance in everyday life. This is why, in most cases, we thrive when we migrate.

Poverty or misery should not be romanticized as some people often do when talks about Cuba, especially those who do not live in those circumstances. Mending shoes, wearing clothes until they're practically kitchen rags, repairing appliances until they're worn out and then repurposing them. These might seem like (or even are) positive and eco-friendly things. But there's a difference between doing it out of necessity and doing it out of conviction. When you do it because you have no alternative or the means to buy something new, the outlook can be quite depressing.

Last week a modification to a car to use charcoal as fuel was trending among newspapers. Besides the innovation, the creator himself says he only did it out of necessity and that as soon as the crisis improves he will return to gasoline.

Of course, this is just one of many innovations and adaptations that we Cubans have made that we would gladly abandon because it would mean that things have finally improved.

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