In the late 1990s, acclaimed Cuban mystery writer Leonardo Padura captured the poignant resignation of those who chose to stay on the island, enduring hardships following both the Cuban Revolution and the Soviet Union’s collapse.

Padura’s main character, Mario Conde, is a hard-boiled police detective who disdains ideology (despite majoring in “dialectical materialism” at university), observing in “Havana Red” that the city “still retains some of its magic, as if it had an invincible poetic spirit.”

Described as a noirish “tropical Marlowe,” Padura wrote about the “Special Period,” Fidel Castro’s name for the years after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Russia had been a strong supporter of the regime, trading it underpriced oil for overpriced sugar.

This gritty angst that Padura described only increased after Russia cut support. For Cubans here, times are difficult — sometimes desperate. The economy is a mess.

“Life here is very, very hard,” one hears over and over. “La lucha,” the daily struggle for economic survival, obsesses average people.

Consider those who are not young or entrepreneurial or who lack access to family capital from Miami. For them, Cuba’s sputtering transition from command-socialism to a mixed-market economy invites a steady exodus. In 2022 alone, 250,000 Cubans (of 11.2 million residents) left the island.

Among those ill-equipped for the change is Padura’s police........

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