Cuba in a Nutshell

From "Castro's Island of Broken Dreams" in Haaretz:

The Communist system has succeeded in reducing the people who live on the island of Cuba to a state of abject poverty, with incredibly low wages, a sky-high number of underemployed workers and a depressingly low GDP. It's funny to hear the impressions of tourists who return from Cuba with stories of happy people salsa dancing in the streets. This is not the reality. Maybe they saw a couple drunks drowning their sorrows in the cheap government-provided rum, which serves as an opiate for the masses. Cuba is really a country of downtrodden people who live in a frightening police state, never knowing if their neighbor is also a police informer.