Deserted Island (New Yorker Article)

[HoyoFan]

Have Cubans Fled One Authoritarian State for Another? https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/10/06/a-cuban-exodus-faces-trumps-america

 

“For seven years, while the Torre K23 hotel was under construction in Havana, the locals complained furiously. They said that the building—the “tower of arrogance,” as some called it—would spoil the neighborhood, a leafy district near the city’s seaside promenade. Besides, they pointed out, there was a perfectly good hotel down the hill: the Habana Libre, a former Hilton that Fidel Castro had made his home base after the Revolution. But Cuba, in the midst of a long-running economic crisis, was desperate to attract foreign currency. And the new hotel was erected by an unassailable entity: the commercial arm of the Revolutionary Armed Forces, known as gaesa, which controls the nation’s construction, tourism, finance, and import-export industries…”