Until Castro took over, Cuba was a lush and sustainable Caribbean island nation. After that, the Communists lopped down every tree on that island, planted three crops only (sugar cane, tobacco, and coca) and subsisted off of freighters loaded with Soviet chemical fertilizers that only ruined the soil worse.
For some reason, Castro fed the people a steady diet of self-righteous lies in their government controlled press, blamed all Castro's purposeful misdoing on American Republicans, and got away with murder -- half a million of them at best estimate.
Reagan eased tensions with Cuba as much as Castro would allow, but Castro still hated America with a vile passion and fed his people even more lies, while Soviet freezer ships loaded with the cheapest porkand beef the Soviets had kept the nation poorly fed. And the lies continued, all force fed from the ruling Communist junta.
Bush Senior made a number of trade concessions, re-opening relations between Cuba and Mexico that Carter had unforgivably bungled. For awhile, it looked like relations would finally thaw. Then Clinton blew it, as predicted. Castro put all the barriers back, went all out into the cocaine trade, and kept up the hate.
Bush Jr. inherited a surly mess from the irresponsible Democrats (viz the Clinton Impeachment) but in five years, managed to get Castro to ease back on his often repeated demands that America become communist hardliners and that we legalize Cuban cocaine (not that from other corrupt Central American nations). Then Castro suffered Alzheimer's and his deputies finally got a chance to bring Cuba into the 21st century.
Cuba remains as poor, unbalanced, and hypocritical as their former Soviet "benefactors" but will not admit their errors due to the intolerable bitter arrogance of leftist liberals. Now, people walk where they once had horse-drawn cars, it is a land of paranoid unrest, and Cuban agriculture is still at an all-time low due to the mismanagement and political fanatacism of their corrupt government.
People, of course, pay a hellish and bitter price for the political arrogance of the handful of communists at the very top, who live in luxury but disregard the people.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuba
