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Conrad Black: A Free Cuba May Be on the Horizon

Conrad Black: A Free Cuba May Be on the Horizon
View of a street in Havana, Cuba, during a mass blackout across most of the country, on March 4, 2026. Reuters/Norlys Perez
Conrad Black
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Commentary

It appears that Cuba is about to end the 67-year disaster of communism. When Fidel Castro became the communist dictator of Cuba on New Year’s Day, 1959, the per capita GDP was US$3,000. After 25 years, it had struggled to $5,000 in 1985, but then collapsed back to $3,000 within a few years. In the last nearly 40 years it has struggled to $8,000, not a bad rate of growth but a disgracefully low figure for such a fundamentally rich country.

Conrad Black
Conrad Black
Author
Conrad Black has been one of Canada’s most prominent financiers for 40 years and was one of the leading newspaper publishers in the world. He’s the author of authoritative biographies of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Richard Nixon, and, most recently, “Donald J. Trump: A President Like No Other,” which has been republished in updated form. Follow Conrad Black with Bill Bennett and Victor Davis Hanson on their podcast Scholars and Sense.