As I consider the dire economic and political turning point my home country of Cuba is facing today, the words of Cuban singer Willy Chirino’s “Nuestro día ya viene llegando (Our day is coming)” come to mind like they did in the 1990s:

“Hoy que mi pueblo vive ilusionado, yo me siento inspirado y un Son estoy cantando anunciándole a todos mis hermanos, que nuestro día viene llegando.” This translates to, “Now that my people live filled with hope, I feel inspired and a Son I am singing, telling all my brothers, that our day is coming.”

Many Cubans in the diaspora of nearly 3 million in the U.S., including some of my own friends and family members, believe the days of the Cuban failed political system on the island are almost over.

As a Cuban American and a senior lecturer in global and intercultural studies, I am curious and concerned about what the country’s next chapter will be.

Growing up in Havana’s Chinatown neighborhood, I witnessed firsthand Cuba’s economic transformation in the early 1990s, during the euphemistically named “Special Period in a Time of Peace” following the collapse of the USSR.

At the time, I was completing my compulsory military service. I saw how the supplies provided by the Eastern Bloc to the Cuban military started to dwindle. Little by little, basic supplies, such as boots and uniforms, were no longer being replaced when they got worn out.

Back home during my weekends off, I started to see changes in my neighborhood. Privatization and commercialization were taking over my old street. The building across from our apartment was being remodeled into a three-story Chinese restaurant called El Pacífico. The many Cuban and Chinese families who had lived there were relocated to apartments on the outskirts of Havana.

Chinatown was open for business. This was the first of many neighborhoods in Havana that started to be commodified for tourism in the 1990s.........

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