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Futuro. For most of the people I know in Cuba, every day starts with this question.

How are we going to eat today?

The theme of the food, of the animals, is an encouragement. Alina Barbara lives in Matanzas, about an hour and a half east of Havana, the capital, and my hometown, where I grew up in the 90s.

Back then, Cuba was in what was known as the special period.

This was the government's euphemism for the deep

economic crisis that followed the fall of the Soviet Union.

Because there's to say that, that on top of all, of all, we're marcists, Leninists. During the first

decades of Fidel and Raul Castro's regime,

the Cuban economy was mostly sustained by food and oil from the Soviet Union

and other socialist countries like East Germany.

But in the 90s, after the Soviet Union collapsed,

my island was on its own.

Salva the revolution in Cuba. I remember the black house during the hot summer nights of my childhood and eating beats every day at school.

We used to joke that Cubans from the 90s were mostly raised on rice and beans.

But today, even that is hard to come by.

Blackouts are not four to eight hours as I remember them.

Now, they can last up to 20 hours.

...