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Cuba, a country plagued by economic crisis. Not enough food, medicine, or fuel. No freedom of press or freedom of speech. The largest protest since Fidel Castro's revolution swept Cuba. Hundreds have been arrested. Health care shortages. We're short on creams, ointments, antibiotics, petrol and gas crisis. Petrol shortages in Cuba became so severe, cues at the petrol pumps stretched for several city blocks. Collapsing infrastructure building in Havana's historic district collapsed at midnight Tuesday, leaving at least two people dead.
The disintegrating buildings of Cuba's once magnificent capital. A country stuck in time for decades. Sanctions choking the economy. We will not lift sanctions on the Cuban regime. Biden has authorized sanctions against communist Cuban officials since the Cuban revolution in the 1950s. Fueled by hope for a better future headed by Fidel Castro. Fidel Castro was the world's longest serving dictator. Now in 2025, things aren't looking as people hoped for. Follow me on this journey as we time travel to Cuba.
Welcome to Cuba, Havana, the capital city here. Today we're going to be exploring Havana, some of the more undiscovered parts, see some of the highlights. Going to have a general explore around the city. Very interesting, very unique. Nothing like I've really ever seen before. So, let's go explore. So, we met a guy called Tau and he's invited us into one of these old dilapidated buildings all over Havana. There's these old collapsing buildings.
Super dangerous. But he grew up in this building, so he knows exactly where you can stand and everything. So, we got to be a bit careful. Lots of the city looks like this. All beautiful buildings just falling into complete disrepair. Check this out. It's a concrete block and then just a metal strut holding up the roof. and he sleeps in here, but he's actually moving out of here cuz it's collapsing. So, he's like this building is just disintegrating. He's lived here his entire life, 50 years, over 50 years.
It's getting worse and worse. They're moving from room to try and find a better place to live, but everything is just collapsing. Yeah. Don't be afraid. Okay. Look at the bathroom. So you've been in this bathroom when it used to be a bathroom. There are Yeah, there was a collective bathroom here. Everybody use it. When you see all this, how does it make you feel to see that this was once a thriving neighborhood and community and now it's just completely falling apart and getting more dangerous every day?
He feels bad because he has to experience all these deteriorations through the years and well and seeing his family live in the house and he is staying here alone because family couldn't live here. His father is the only one staying here near to this house. It's sad. Yeah, it's sad to see your house falling down like this. He doesn't want to leave but he has because this is going to fall down. He went to the government asking for help but no one is helping him finding a new house or something. The view is beautiful. Well, you have the cathedral there, man.
Can definitely see why he doesn't want to leave, but this is just too dangerous. What do you generally eat? Yeah, he's water. Okay. He has not too many food. Not too much food. Chicken pieces for the dog and him. This is for the for preparing the asthma solution. He can die if he doesn't use it. So, this is also for asthma. So, how many different asthma medications are you taking? Cuz you got them in the fridge and the pipe and that only one he has at the moment. He just takes whatever he can find and he mixes them all together and stuff.
He worked as a security guard in a place and he is earning like 200 2,00 pesos monthly, less than $10. We're going to go up to the next level. And this is how you have to get up there because these stairs over here have collapsed and it's too dangerous. I'll put the camera in the bag for this one. Super sketchy. Any minute this is going to collapse. So you imagine once these were thriving communities and people have put the effort into decorating it and it's just completely collapsing. Look rotting. That ceiling looks like it's going to collapse any minute. This is extremely precarious. The room that we were just in, the room next door just collapsed a month ago. This place is going down. The sad thing is if you look across the skyline of the old town
of Havana, a lot of the buildings are like this, you know, some in between. Some obviously a lot better. There's beautiful buildings, old wellpreserved ones, but the majority are like this. Quite profound. It's just basically like maintenance was just forgotten about. He's heading back down now. And the reason that he comes up here is to empty the water out of these top levels to make sure that the roofs stay intact as long as possible cuz the more waterways on them, the more likely they'll collapse onto his house. Made it down. It's uh much more crazy.
Very good, man. That's crazy, dude. What do you think of that? Oh my god, that's feels risky. That's good. It's good to have that in your life. You in perspective. That was absolutely wild. You can just imagine it was a really beautiful place once upon a time. There's nothing to eat today. You grew up your whole life in this building? 55 years. And he lived here for he was a child. And what did this building look like when you were a child?
Beautiful place. stop everything and the country stopped since uh since this arrived the commander Castro they have no maintainers at all after 80s it starts falling the revolution and then slowly the building starts to collapse you can't afford buying materials these kind of things are really hard to buy I mean you can you eat or you buy uh this polymer right It's very risky for this family. People live below this collapsed building. Children. Yeah. Coming into T's dad's house next door. When it rains the water a lot here.
There are a lot of water falling down. That's why he has to get up frequently to clean and not let the water So you were just telling us that you were assaulted. Wow. He was stabbed twice here on his in the abdomen here. He has a two stabs. They hit him with a shell in his skull. Why? Someone confused him with another guy and start a fight.
this drinking water. So, there's these containers on all the roofs in the city. These blue containers, they collect the rain water and it runs down into these pipes to drink. So, we're here with a lovely lady called Mian. You've grown up in Cuba your entire life, 65 years, and he has lived here all life, right? And how has Cuba changed over those 65 years? It was another time when he was young. I mean, it was totally different from now. Better or worse now. Well, you can see her face. It was different. Totally for good before. How do you see the future of Cuba?
She aims that it gets better in some point, but she doesn't know. 67 years of revolution. She was 2 years when it happens. Why do you think it's got worse? Not sure. I don't know about that. You know what I'm saying? No, that's okay. What do you like about Cuba? She likes everything. She has the opportunity to leave the country once and she never she didn't do it. You deeply love Cuba. Yeah. She was she's happy to living here and she doesn't want to leave. So this is where you do all your cooking.
What's for lunch today? What is that to say? No. No lunch today. She doesn't know. It's hard to get food. Yeah, it's hard. Money. How often do you eat? Once a day. Yesterday they ate beans and rice. How much does one meal cost? With 700 pesos she can cook a pack of rice and a pack of beans. That's lots of meals, right? Yeah. They could eat with that like for a week, I guess. So like one meal would be for us in the West would be very cheap, right? But here that's a lot of money because they only earn $8 a month.
Yeah, exactly. Good stuff. So, we just met a local girl called Heidi, and she's going to show us her uh nail salon. We're also here with Heidi. He's business going. This is her second client on today. Is the business okay? Do you enjoy living in Havana? Is it a fun life here? She enjoy living here and she's happy with her business here and she does everything here. Not only nails like now she also works with the hair.
Have you ever left Cuba or you've always been in Cuba your entire life? She live in Croatia. Yeah. She lived there for a while and she's also a dancer, a ballet dancer. What are the main differences that you saw between Croatia and Cuba? She needs to do this kind of business instead of getting a job cuz the salaries are really low here. The only way that she thinks you can earn your life here is having a another job or your own entrepreneur like she's doing it right now. That's the difference between Kawaiia and Cuba. Salaries are pretty low but there are higher. in the domain.
3,000 pesos uh 4,000 pesos monthly. It's like 7 or $8 monthly. 7 or $8 a month. Yeah. Right. I just want to share a quick shout out to the sponsor of this segment of today's video, Odo. They're a gamecher for keeping your business life running smoothly. Basically, it's an all-in-one management software that makes handling day-to-day tasks for any business simple. You can track projects, deadlines, budgets, and work together with your team in real time. A great tool is their CRM app, which is an all-in-one hub for managing customers. You can track leads, keep up with client chats, forecast revenue, and just drag and drop your way through your pipeline like you're moving sticky notes around.
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Sometimes she goes to a restaurant or other places, she can have this luxury once in a while. That's why she works like this. She has a daughter and she likes to take her daughter to for a meal or for I don't know for a candy or something. But most people can't do that, right? Especially the older people, elderly suffers a lot here with the food and because they don't have the pension. I mean the only thing they can get from the government is the check you know like stamps. Yeah. The stamps. It's not enough at all for especially for elderly. They are the most are suffering this kind of situation.
Okay. So, we're here with Ariel. Who's Ariel? Ariel. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you, man. What do you want to know, man? I never So, what's happened here? Like you lost one leg and the other leg's really infected, right? I have an accident. Somebody hit you in a car. In the car. I stay in the my bike and somebody coming in the car and broking my f my arterial. You're female. Yeah. I don't know how they live. And this one I have an accident and my job I am mechanic. I cut is a metal infection.
Infection. Yeah. And right now I try to find medicine for everywhere that is impossible because my government make it something really wrong. Every Cuban people follow tourist only for Shen money because if you don't have euro pound Canadian American you can find sugar coffee milk olo fish beef. So anything but if you have a euro pound Canadian you can buy everything but given people don't have asset to this kind of money so you need foreign currency because local currency can't buy you the medicine so you need the foreign medicine so that's why no coffee no sugar no milk right so for example when I'm walking around lots of people coming to me and asking for foreign currency right
because you can't have a million pesos but you can buy any medicine any food I think it's coming the war here. Where is the medicine? Where is the food? Where is the gas? Where is the electricity? Where is the water? It's coming the war here. So, do you think that people are not happy in Cuba? Everybody's angry. Everybody, you can see that in the face. Really? If you coming here 2 years before, everybody smiling, dancing. So, it's getting worse and worse. Now, people is angry because and where I live right now, we have no water, no electricity, and no gas. What are you going to do about this? Because this is going to um get worse. It's getting Yeah.
This is infection. It's really bad. And the other side I have. So, what are you going to do about that? Because you really need some to find the money to have penicellin, you know. Yeah. Penicellin. Yeah. This the tourist give you money? Not everyone, man. Why do you think I am here? Some sometimes I don't do that. I am mechanic. I speak Italian too. That mean the tourists give you money? No. Everybody this man don't understand why when the people has more they give less. But
So this is the capital building, the center of the government here. And it's absolutely beautiful, absolutely flawless, really well-maintained, perfect. There are some really nice parts of the city, especially in the center, but majority of the city is uh looks kind of like it's falling into ruin. So, we've come up to this beautiful restaurant overlooking the city here. So, there's lots of really nice places here, right? For eating.
Yeah. It's hard to find one, right? Is it? No. For eating? Yeah. For me, it's hard to find. Well, you have to come like a place for this, for having this kind of food. Yeah. If you walk the streets, it's really hard to find a restaurant like this. All of them are little kitchens in the house, little house. We've jumped into one of these amazing old classical cars. And we're going to go to the more up market part of town cuz obviously we've seen the struggle in the historical center here. There is definitely so much beauty mixed in here,
but lots of people are really struggling here. So, we want to go and see the other side and see what it's like on the kind of upper echelon of society. So, we just arrived in a place called Metamar, which is the nicest neighborhood in all of Havana. big houses here, lots of embassies and things. A lot of pretty elite, highranking people live in these neighborhoods. So that big huge building there, that's actually the Russian embassy. Absolutely massive monstrosity of a building. Now we're going through some neighborhoods. These houses are obviously a lot larger. You have to have a bit of money to live here. There's nicer cars on the street.
Still quite run down in areas, but definitely a lot higher standard of living than in the center where there's a bit of sewage on the streets and rubbish and things. All this rubbish is mostly collected here. Quite interesting contrast for sure. Here's the K Marks Theater. So, you were just talking to the driver about the petrol situation, right? Yeah. He's telling me that if you want to put gasoline here, you need to put some money in a car, in a local currency card, and pay for it. You just So, you just can't go to the gas station and put gasoline with local currency money. I
mean, they don't accept cash. The gasoline they are getting right now, I think it's coming from Russia and most of it from Venezuela. And you were saying part of the reason that the rubbish is stacking up in the center of the city is because the trash trucks don't have petrol to be able to pick up the trash. That's what someone told me. I asked a girl in one of this street where we see this pile of rubbish pile of garbage and she told me that the problem is that the trucks doesn't have any gasoline for going and pick the garbage, right? It's crazy. It's really a big problem. There is a lot of places with pile of rubbish and garbage.
Can you ask the driver how life is here? Yeah. He start at 5:30 in the morning driving and spend the whole day. So he's been working for like 11 hours. So he's obviously making money during the day, but how much of that goes to petrol? Like what's the percentage of the profit? gas. The gasoline is about 10,000 pesos daily. And besides, he has to pay to the owner of the car like 11,000 pesos. It's like 21,000 pesos. He could have, I don't know, like 10,000 more for him or a little more. He's still earning quite a bit more money than the average person than cuz we get people that make 2,000 in a month. When you work with a car, you always get a little more than just working in an office or in a shop or any other
place. A driver is like a sought after desired job because it pays quite well comparing to other jobs. myself. So this morning this whole street was filled with garbage, but they're cleaning it all up now. So that's really great to see. Like we were just talking about the fuel for the garbage trucks and things. They must have uh sorted that out. It was quite shocking to see because there was piles of rubbish and we're just around the corner from the main capital. a 5m minute or less walk from the capital building. Um, and these streets were completely covered in
rubbish. Um, like big piles of it. Here's a few photos. But, uh, yeah, they've cleaned it all up. So, that concludes our first day in Havana. This city is honestly something really special. Beautiful, beautiful city in so many ways. The people are so kind, just soable and welcoming. I'll see you in the next video. We're going to explore more of Havana. So much to see here. It's shocking. Obviously, the circumstances are very hard. People are struggling. We'll delve deep in the next video. And uh thank you so much for watching. And in case I don't see you, good afternoon, good evening, and good
