The Underworld Podcast - Cuba’s New Synthetic Drug Wave

Episode Date: October 13, 2026

How Cuba is Slipping into Drug Chaos Since the beginning of the year, the US has placed Cuba under an oil embargo, crippling its public services and throwing a society that was already on its knees into chaos. Blackouts roll for days, trash piles high and locals are getting sick from a smorgasbord of airborne diseases. Cuba has survived similar crises before: in the mid-1990s its people endured a calamity that wiped 90 percent off the economy. But today is different. And amid the madness, a new scourge has appeared on Cuba’s streets, a synthetic drug the locals call ‘quimico’. And as gangs coalesce to sell it, our correspondent got caught up in Cuba’s new street violence himself. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. Hi, I'm Alex Goldman. You may know me as the host of Reply All, but I'm done with that. I'm doing something else now. I've started a new podcast called Hyperfixed. On every episode of Hyperfixed, listeners write in with their problems, and I try to solve them. Some massive and life-altering, and some so minuscule, it'll boggle your mind.

No matter the problem, no matter the size, I'm here for you. That's Hyperfixed, the new podcast from Radiotopia. Find it wherever you listen to podcasts or at Hyperfixedpod.com. 2022. And there is strange news coming out of Havana, Cuba. The country's interior ministry has just announced the arrest of 16 people, 14 in jail and two under house arrest for masterminding what they say is the shipment of a new kind of narcotic. According to top cops on the island, over half a kilo made its way to Jose Marti International Airport hidden inside the false bottoms of wallets destined for sale on the island. But more is coming inside household appliances, shoes,

religious statues, perfume bottles, seasoning and the bodies of airline passages themselves. In fact, the ministry adds, Cuba is being peppered by attempts to get illegal drugs onto the street. Cocaine mixed with chocolate or gelatin is another scourge reaching Cuba, it claims, via gangs based across the Florida Strait in Miami. Drugs going from the US into Cuba? In years previous, an artisanal trade at best. But now, in the shadow of the COVID-19 pandemic and the economic hardships it's birthed, drug abuse is skyrocketing.

Crack and meth have joined the usual booze and weed on Havana's streets. Groups have coalesced to sell them. Gangs? Not quite. At least not in a sense Cuba's neighbours know them. Say what you like about communism. but one thing totalitarians do well is keep such groups off the streets. But the times they are changing.

Cuba is poor. Sanctions are crippling it. Blackouts roll and nobody's taking away the trash. Jobs are scarce. And increasing numbers of young folks are slipping into the black market to survive. And those for whom the desperation is just too much? Well, there's a drug for them as well. And this April 2022 shipment is the first day.

time the Cuban government has even admitted that it exists. Chemical. The chemical. A simple name for a simple yet devastating drug. Part synthetic cannabinoid, part acetone and sometimes part fentanyl. Cooked up and sprayed onto paper, cut into tabs, stuffed down the end of cigarettes and smoked. A few seconds later, lights out. Oblivion. Folks scattered about on streets and in parks.

in Estado zombie, a zombie state, just like Portland or Philadelphia, a drug to sweep up the most vulnerable in spectacular devastating fashion. Cuban cops are clear, this is coming to us from abroad. But that's not always the case. Increasingly, locals say, chemical is being cooked up in labs and stored in stash houses on the edge of Havana, in shanties and towns that have acted as the Capitol's clearinghouse for years. Perhaps the authorities believe that shining a light on the problem will help solve it, but the genie is not going back in the bottle. 2022 passes into 2023 and 24. The groups become gangs. Some even say they're packing heat. Then 2025, 26. Donald Trump takes office and takes aim at Cuba. Oil stopped coming. The blackouts. The blackouts.

get worse and the trash piles high. People can't sleep, can't work, can't wash their clothes. The desperation grows. So does the use of chemical and by the middle of the year when one reporter is dispatched to write about Cuba's worst crisis in decades, a new criminal underworld is flourishing in Havana's near perpetual darkness. Welcome to the underworld podcast. Hello, this is the Underworld podcast. The weekly crime show that pits two illusory reporters and disillusioned men against the endless morass of drugs, violence and political tomfoolery. That is organized crime.

I am Sean Williams, a magazine writer based in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and I am joined as ever by my podcast wife and sometimes psychological counselor Danny Gold in New York City. Yeah, I kind of like that. I think of you more, though, as a guy at a bar who's, like, forced to listen to me complained, but you're my psychological counselor as well. Yeah, those are the same things as far as I'm concerned. Anyway, a quick reminder, follow us on all the socials, sign up to our Patreon, wherever we have bonuses, and the brilliant, bad guy, movie gang.

You can watch that on the Patreon as well. You can buy merch, underworldpod.com. Get in touch with tips, abuse, advertising opportunities at the underworldpodcast at gmail.com. Is there anything important? I'm missing here, mate? I usually miss something. Yeah, Patreon.com slash an oral podcast or you can sign up on Spotify or on iTunes and I just search the Enroll Podcast on YouTube

on Facebook, on Instagram, on TikTok and you'll find us there. You will, you will, we're everywhere. We are Legion. Anyway, Dale, Dale, cue the music. Yeah, get that going. Hold on. This is how it's been doing.

This is going to work. Oh, you wait. Yeah. Oh yeah, this is perfect, this is perfect. Here we go. Yes, yes, yes. July 9, 26. Those were dark, those are under streets.

The kind of dark and wet and closed that will drive any man or woman to drink. Ain't much to do when all you got back home is the prospect of a sleepless night distracted by the mosquitoes. So you prop up the bar, waiting for the proprietor to say, Istanbul Serato. Until you tumble onto the streets, those streets all curdled with trash and debris and dog mess. Let only by a moon so thin and sickle-shaped old Fidel himself could have plucked it from the sky and stitch it onto one of his olive-green epaulets. It was real dark, is what I'm saying. And it was late, sometime around half-past eleven, when the only folks braving the sidewalk were the sozzled and the drug addicted. The barman of warming at the walk home was bad news, with the island under siege and out of power.

With society crumbling quicker than a brownie and a fat baby's fingers. Goons with nothing ado but to score drugs or figure ways to scores cash to score a sex. drugs. Ain't nothing more dangerous to a man's health than naivete. And to those wild-eyed boys I must have lit up their Christmas tree. Headphones in and phone bulging out of my pocket. I've done that same walk almost a dozen times before. Ten minutes is nothing. A veritable hop and a skip to the small second-floor apartment in which I've been going quietly crazy for more days than I cared to imagine. Ravaged by insomnia and ill health. Live in La Vida Cubana, another. the words. I headed out of Bedado and into Central Ovana. Its piebal, porticoes and townhouses

lit cleaner their color by a sentry of sea air and ignominy and turned onto Neptuno, my street, a one-time shopper's paradise now barely home to a state-owned bodega. Two minutes, three, just a few more and I'll be home and dry. But then, out of nowhere, a tap on the shoulder. A chiar is. I turn, then, fwack! A sucker punch. straight to the temple, and I'm on the ground, scrabbling like a Greco-Roman wrestler with ants in his pants. I'll land a couple of prostrate shots, but there's three of them, and they work quick, kicking and turning out my pockets quicker than a school bully with a gambling debt. And then they're gone, disappearing into the darkness like they were never there.

And there I am, blood soaked and black-eyed, finger-bent backward like I'm giving me on face the bird. Tebago! I cry into the night, I'll pay you. It ain't dignified, but it's true. and then I stumbled back onto my feet and I looked down and realize I felt right in darkness. Man, I love this job. I'll just stop that out.

A bit of sound effects for you there. Love it. Love it. For those of you who are listening on audio and not video, we made Sean put on like a 1940s detective coat, light a cigarette, and made the screen black and white, so he was just doing his own little noir intro.

I kind of envisioned like a graphic novel, like a comic book almost with that, but it worked really well. Yeah, I mean, imagine that you're a four-year-old man and you spent your entire career deliberately being behind cameras, and that is why I'm currently sweating. But what do you think? Was it Raymond Chandler, Daschle Hammett, Leonard? I mean, was it better than all of those combined? Was it the best thing you've ever seen? It actually reminded me more of like when Calvin and Hobbs used to do that,

would Calvin would do that in like the comic strip, you know, when he would do, he had like his detective character. So it was like on that, but we'll say, yeah, Raymond Chandler asked, that's what I meant. Definitely not like Calvin, imagining a Calvin at Hobbs, more like Raymond Chandler. Okay, great. Well, at least we innovate on this show. Definitely. Creative out of it.

Yeah, well, there's quite enough of that, as I think we can all agree. Anyway, Cuba, drugs, crime. All of that stuff. That's what you hear for, isn't it? It's not my acting. It was once said that you could walk from Vidara. to old Havana, right through Centro, this tangle of poor 18th century townhouses at 3 a.m. Blind drunk, and the worst somebody would do was tell you the way home.

That, as you've just heard and unfortunately seen, is no longer the case. Panditias or gangs are proliferating throughout the country, protecting street corners from rival groups, and increasingly cooking up their own product inside Cuba. Some of them are armed, and it doesn't take a genius to figure out that if things keep going the way they are. the sanctions and the blackouts and people generally not being able to live well. Cuba's streets are going to get a lot more violent heading into 2027. Yeah, it's starting to sound like Haiti a little bit, man.

Damn. It's starting to look a lot like Haiti as that famous song goes. Yeah, that guy who got mugged on July 9, that really cool guy you just saw, that is obviously me. I probably shouldn't have been listening to a podcast on my way home in a blackout. That was pretty dumb. And it always cost me my entire story. It did make for a great running WhatsApp combo, though, in the days afterwards as you were losing your mind. Like, I enjoy it, but it was... What does the BBC do?

Inform, entertain and something else. Well, I did one of those, anyway. It was an interesting experience. Notable journalists, back up your interviews every day. Yes, folks, I spent almost a month in Cuba, and all what I got was this lousy podcast episode. But before we get to all of that, and the madness that continued in the days, following it, plus my extraordinary capacity for self-pity, let's get things up to speed, because in last week's show we learned about Havana's mob pedigree from the 1920s to the dictatorship

of Fulhencio Bactista, when crooks like Myelanski and Lucky Luciano ran a mock in the Cuban capital, making millions for casinos and brothels and race courses and nightclubs and all of that stuff. And then we had the rise of Fidel Castro, a one-time gangster adjacent student leader himself, carried about guns and had a clique of his own, before he disowned that, attacked an army barracks, got in prison for two years, regathered his men and swept through the countryside. Luciano was long gone by then, but Lanski leaves Havana in January 1959, just a day before the revolutionaries take Havana, sack the mafia's business, sometimes running pigs along the casino floor, and they remake Cuba in the image of a socialist utopia.

Lansky winds up in the Bahamas, Batista flees into exile and a near-bishop. by a Dominican Republic. He puts his eldest son and 53 military leaders on a plane to Jacksonville, Florida, while another plane carrying Batista family members touches down at New York's Ardewald Airport, latterly JFK. Here is a Guardian report from the heart of the Cuban Revolution, quote. Joyous parades broke out in Havana, and according to latest reports have turned today into bloody riots. The offices of the newspaper Diempo have been set on fire, and several gambling casinos sacked. The officers of Air France, Venezuelan Airlines, Iberian Airlines, Royal Dutch Airlines and credit and investment banks were

among those broken into and windows were smashed, furniture destroyed and items stolen. Castro, the Boy Scout Napoleon with the Beard, has in two years converted 40 audacious Garizos into a conquering army capable of disrupting the life and economy of Cuba and dictating the character of the next government. Boy Scout Napoleon with a beatnik beard is grade A-star. and pretty much why I read that quote. And you can tell, even from that report, right, that global media is really rather smitten with Castro and his buddies. Che Guevara, of course, being won, even if folks fear or despise them.

I mean, it is a pretty remarkable story, right? How they survived and grew and then won. I mean, Jay failed to replicate it anywhere else in his future attempts, but what they did in Cuba was, like, against insurmountable odds. I think Jolly Anderson's book, like, his huge book on Che. Yeah, Che does a really good job of detailing that. great. Yeah, it's a phenomenal book. Yeah, Patrick Sims also, who's

been on this show, he wrote a great book about kind of writing around Cuba, replicating the motorcycle diaries as well. That's really cool. But John Lee was helping me a lot when I was reporting this story. So shout out to him, because he was kind of giving me a bunch

of really cool tips, and I'm going to dump a draft on him to read. So if you're listening to this, John Lee, apologies. Anyway, all of this the story we just told is Amplified by Castro's incredible oratory ability and the way he's able to tell a story to capture hearts, not only in Cuba, but all around the world. He can weave Baudelaire and Whitman into speeches about seizing sugar factories, Tolstoy and Trotsky into tedious state reports. In Gen Zs,

he's cooking on savage red-coated vibes with no cap. He's aura farming guys, and if you want to tell me what that means, feel free to email. Not great, pal, not great. I think I've, I mean, I've long since dispensed with ideas of being cool. just saw what happened then. Anyway, Castro, big fan of the French Revolution, likes Rospier, which is a pretty big red flag, says it's, quote, better to go too far than to not go far enough. And he speaks at this crazy rate, like sometimes 300 words a minute. Folks at the US embassy in Havana get used to quote, the feeling of walking gently around the edges of a volcano that is liable to burst forth with sulfurous fumes at the slightest provocation. That is listening to Fidel, of

Of first, he's nationalist. In fact, he loves Abraham Lincoln so much that he laser reef at his memorial in Washington, D.C. But then comes the botched pay of pigs' invasion in 1961 when the CIA backs a military landing of around 1,400 Cuban exiles. Los Yankees become Havana's Bet Noir, and Castro cleaves closer to the Communists in the Soviet Union. Then, 1962, brings the Cuban missile crisis when it is discovered that Moscow has a bunch of rockets pointed at the US. And the CIA then goes all out to assassinate Castro using exiles, but also figures from organized crime.

And if you want more on that, we've done a couple of shows in the past, one by Danny on Santa Traficante Jr., the Tampa Mobster, whose casino and criminal interests have been wound deep around Batista's rule. And there is another about this crazy era where you get JM Wave and all kinds of CNN shenanigans, the exploding Cuban cigars, which is kind of a bit overblown. But anyway, there is among this group of underworld people, Chicago outfit boss Sam Giancana, one of America's most powerful mobsters, and Johnny Roselli, aka handsome Johnny, who moved from Chicago to be the outfit's point man in Vegas. There is a $150,000 bounty offered to kill Castro, and then you

get all the kind of madcap assassination attempts that fail to get the biggest scalp on the island. Brazil gets so invested in killing Castro that he joins boat raids along the Cuban coast. Then in 1963, John F. Kennedy is shot dead in Dallas, maybe by the mob and the Castro plots are shelved. And then there are the connections between Castro's Cuba and the Latin American cocaine trader did a whole show on that a year back as well. It involves some pretty crazy Milo Minda Bender-style characters, Colombian diplomats, revolutionary military leaders,

and Castro himself. Tons of US outlets report that the Cuban leader has secret bank accounts and connections to some of the region's biggest drug lords. Yeah, we really have done episodes on everything. Like, every episode is full of new stuff, but references like five old ones. I mean, it's like an encyclopedia of crying pretty much.

Yeah, if anyone knows how we can sell this IP, please get in touch. here is Rachel Arenfeld, and it must be said extremely right-wing think tanker of the time, writing in her book Narco-terrorism. Quote, Havana not only was prepared to ignore drug-laden motherships operating in its waters, but also to provide fueling and repair services in its ports, shelter privileges that will come in handy in the treacherous waters of the Florida Straits. Havana also offered to escort the narcotics boats upon leaving Cuban ports, as well as provide Cuban flags to disguise their origin all the way to feed the vessels stationed off the Florida Keys. In return for this package of protection and provision, the Colombians, the cartel leaders of course, would pay $800,000 per vessel, a bargain to the cash-laden Colombian narco-trafficanthes. In 1979, Castro allegedly then gets a little bit of his own back on the Americans when he dispatches thousands of gangsters and intelligence agents into the US

alongside the 125,000 or so who flee Cuba on the Marielle Boatlift. If you want to know more about this, you could start with a little known movie called Scarface. The stories keep coming during the 1980s. There are bodies of supposed Cuban and Colombian narcos dropping all over the the United States and the revelations that Havana is shepherding massive shipments of product via something called Departemento MSC, which is the regime's way of turning to all the black market to get vital foreign exchange to keep the lights on. I think we've done some stuff on North Korea which has a, is it Bureau 39? I think it's pretty much the same sort of thing.

Tobacco, lobster, clothes, electronic goods, artwork, diamonds, ivory and drugs. regime newspaper Granmar even admits as such, writing quote, its purpose is to fight against the economic blockade of the United States that has been operation since 1962 so as to have the means to procure products such as medical equipment, medication, computers, and so on. Cuba uses Panama to shift a lot of department MCs contraband.

That sounds like the name of a group of 1990s, like British electro-wrappers, you know, department emcees. I like department encases, yeah, yeah. I've been listening to a lot of stereo MCs recently, actually. They are. That holds up, man. It's fantastic. Yeah.

But in 1998, the US indicts Panama's strongman leader, Manuel Noriega, under the RICO Act, Noriega's top diplomat, Jose Blandon, sings like a canary about Castro's involvement in drugs. Castro needs a scapegoat. And in June 1988, he arrests 14 military chiefs, including war hero, Arnaudo Ochoa on drug trafficking charges. Under a month later, four of the men are executed at a military facility near Guantanamo Bay. Castro claims his cleaned house, problems solved. But he's got even bigger problems on the horizon.

For decades of US sanctions, Cuba has relied almost entirely on the largest of the Soviet Union to keep its economy afloat. The Soviets pay massively inflated prices for Cuban sugar, a bit like Man City, buying Favie and Delf, and they supply Cuba. That was a little topical joke there. Danny, did you get it there? Yeah, cool it with the Man City disrespect man.

I don't want to make enemies of the Gallagher brothers. Oh my God. No, no. No, we can't be doing pro-Man City stuff. No, no, no, no. We are anti-City. Anyway, they supply Cuba, not Man City, the Soviet Union with hugely subsidized oil, petroleum,

machinery, food and other industrial equipment. Visit Bet, MDM, Casino, and check out the newest exclusive. The Price is Right Fortune Pick. BetMDM and GameSense remind you to play responsibly. 19 plus to wager. Ontario only. Please play responsibly.

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Interviews with people who will make you smarter. Does the amount that you learn protect you from cognitive decline? Paula don't know. Can't people just listen to the show? Can't they just enjoy a delightful treehouse full of information? I think I'm bleeding. Join us and be a nobody. I'm Richard Serrett.

Join me on Strange Planet for in-depth conversations with the world's top paranormal investigators, alien abductees, bigfoot trackers, monster hunters, time travelers, and more. The handler one day told her this whole thing about how they've been terraforming on Mars, and they're building a colony, and they're recruiting specific people of specific bloodlines and specific talents and skill sets to go onto the planet. On Richard Serrett's Strange Planet, we're redefining reality. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts. Moscow also forgives Cuban debts and absorbs trade deficits, basically props the entire Castro game up.

And then, don't know if you know this, the Soviet Union collapses. And Cuba hasn't been doing much beyond getting gold-level prices for sugar, which is now almost worth nothing. Up to 90% is wiped off its economy and the island falls into a crisis that Castro will dub, euphemistically, the special period in times of peace. Yeah, that's actually what I call my mid-30s as well, euphemistically. That's Tinder not a thing back then. Now, for the most part, Cubans can still use their libretta, which is the food ration card that works at state-run Bordegas. But the amount they can get is slashed drastically.

Leonardo Padura, the famous Cuban detective novelist, said famously that, Nadia se muriouyei was de ambre, but narii comio, the sufficient. No one died of hunger, but no one ate enough. Instead of relying on the state, the Cuban people develop a knack for so-called Invento, which is a catch-all phrase, meaning basically doing anything on the black market, anything illegal, or just scavenging household items out of other stuff, like water heaters from tin cans or kerosene lamps.

This is tremendously impressive. But the privation of the special period leads Cuba, and particularly Havana down some dark criminal alleys. Most notably the phenomenon of Hinaterismo, which is literally jockeying, but is a code word for a new underworld of drugs and sex all over the Cuban capital. Tourism, especially American tourism, is a target of Fidel Castro when the revolution takes hold, especially via the mob-owned hotels and casinos that had become hotbeds of prostitution. When Fidel had taken control of Cuba, he wanted to tear down tourism, especially American tourism, right, via the mob-owned hotels and casinos that had become hotbeds of sex and drugs.

This went against Castro's idea of the new man, stoic, self-sacrificing, prioritizing the common good over personal benefit. Plus, Castro hated the gangsters who'd taken over Havana, so he ransacked and shuttered mob tourism venues. sex workers have been quote unquote rehabilitated into secretarial work or factory work. But during the special period, Castro turns once more to tourism as a way to scrape back his economy. However, he bans from being able to enter some hotels and foreigners are bust around between these rarerified facilities in air-conditioned vehicles, while neighborhoods, especially like Centro Havana, fall into chaos and despair, leading to what is now, commonly called tourism apartheid. The locals then, they can barely eat. They're extremely poor and they are watching all these fancy tourist buses ferrying rich foreigners around Havana without

realizing what's going on in the poor areas. So the people turn to the margins. Mostly women doing sex work for desperately needed US dollars, men get into small-time crime like pickpocket in street hustling, but also some bandied together into street gangs, setting any contraband there, and they can get their hands on, including drugs. Castro himself even seems to support Hinotidismo in a 1992 speech in which he says that Cuban prostitutes are the quote, most educated and healthy on the market. Early 90s, man, people just didn't give a fuck. You could just say stuff like that, even if you're the president, you know?

Yeah, it's a pretty incredible quote, man. Anyway, it's during this time. He's proud, you know? It's sort of pride. Yeah, I mean, as he should be, as a great education system, you know, no matter who's in it. It's during this time that a remarkable new form of literature springs out of the poorest areas of Havana, gritty crime and detective novels, memoirs about sex and drugs and crime by the likes of Leopadora, Zoe Valdez, and my favorite, Pedro Juan Gutierrez, whose Dirty Havana trilogy is this, like,

grotesque realism of life during the special period. I can't read you the bit I want to read you. because it is too post-watershit. It's like on page one as well. But I massively recommend this book. It's really like made an impact on me. Here is one passion's quote, everybody's always trying to fuck you over,

squeeze a few pesos out of you, because that's what poverty is. Shit attracts shit. I assume there are translations, yeah? There are translations, yeah. It's so cool, man. And it's going to form a big part of the story that I'm writing for Harper's. Anyway, Gutierrez also describes the ramp

and drug dealing that goes on in Havana. Cocaine for the rich in Vedado, weed for everybody else. Padoura's crime novels also get into it, especially as Mario Condé series. All of that's in English. I actually listen to like a BBC, like an audio play of it,

which was really cool, because I couldn't concentrate on anything when I was in Havana. By 1999, things are getting really dire, and Cuba's sex tourism industry is off the hook. write somebody on the highly esteemed world sex guide website quote,

a guy with enough hard currency can have the time of his life in what is probably the most romantic city in the world with, in my humble opinion, the most drop-dead gorgeous, sultry tanned beauties in the hemisphere.

That is some fedora, neck beer stuff and also brilliant, early internet. Yeah, I bet you were doing research, huh, on the situation,

but who was, Who was going? Was it like, you know, I know a lot of Canadians, I assume Europeans, were there other Latin America, like who was going there? Yeah, tons of Spanish, but also Russians. Loads and loads and loads of Russians. And I think, if I'm remembering right, I only saw a handful of tourists when I was there

because of the stuff that's going on now. But the very few of them I saw, there were quite a few Russians who were still ostensibly buddies, but they're not really helping them at all. But the special period that we're talking about, that is coming to an end. Castro has spotted a potential ally in Venezuela's new socialist hard man, Hugo Chavez, and in 2000, the country cement their relationship with a raft of trade deals, basically doing something pretty similar to what Castro had done with the Russians.

The Cuban leader then launches into a tirade against Hinniterizmo, Havana's Teatro Karl Marx. It's a pretty awesome building, saying that, quote, A pair of high hills, a luxurious little shoe, a seductive perfume, a new dress, cannot be the price of honor and the sustenance of a nation. So he's like, okay, we don't need to be sex workers anymore. I'm going to get back to the old days. Here is Kubernetes, which is a Miami Cuban website, with more. In a speech attacking the rise of crime in general, Castro announced he was sending the

Hinateras home, back to the rural villages from which most of them escaped to Havana. Any girls seen roam in the capital, dancing all night, dressed in extravagant clothes, Cue Castro warned would be sent to rehabilitation. It hurts too much to the country that has done so much to dignify women that a foreigner can come to trick her, to fill her with vices, to corrupt her, he said. There's some really great information about this in the book by Ada Ferrer, the American Cuban historian called Cuba and American History is super incredible. I think it won the Pulitzer or something like that a couple of years ago.

Anyway, all the while, another form of organized crime is on the rise across Cuba, which is the network springing up to get Cubans off the island and into exile, most notably, of course, in the United States, but also Mexico, Dominican Republic, Panama, other nations, even Brazil. People smuggling has stayed huge for decades later as an estimated 2 to 2.5 million people have fled the island. That's like 15 to 20% of the population. It's incredible. As recently as last week, the Miami Cuban website El Doque reported on the Queen of the South, a travel agent who gets Cuban's airline tickets, but also a host of other stuff, quote, a scheme that blurs the line

between selling airline tickets and facilitating irregular migration. And to the article, quote, several people who went to her to organize their trips, claimed they gave her thousands of dollars and ended up without tickets, without money or stranded mid-jurney. Some of these families also report receiving threats to keep them from making their stories public or going to the authorities, and that they were warned they could face, quote, dangerous consequences, like sounding a lot like the kind of people who get folks out through Mexico into the US as well, the coyotes. And then there are the dark networks of smugglers catering specifically to Cuban musicians,

boxers and baseball stars. I might do a separate show, for example, on the dramatic plot to bring Cuban baseball star, Yassil Puege to the US. That's a whole fascinating thing, including Mexican cartels, which I think the claim is that he's like still in hock to the cartels now.

I think he's playing in Mexico or somewhere in the Caribbean. I'm not quite sure. But, yeah, I once caught a fly ball from him in Oklahoma City. It was cool. Anyway, also booming since the start of the special period is a system of street gangs, particularly in Havana.

Some of them are based on groups across the Florida Strait, like Blood for Pain, which emerges in old Havana at the turn of the 21st century. The Diamond Gang, active in central Havana, it also rises. This is mostly small-time stuff, right? But it lays a foundation for the next big crisis to hit Cuba, which is the COVID-19 pandemic. Lockdowns batter Cuba's economy, as they do most countries. And the economic loss forces millions more.

Cubans out of the country, in some cases, but also onto the black market, remember, in bento. As one bicycle taxi rider told me when I visited a couple of months ago, quote, more hunger, more problems, inequality, zero interest from the government on the population. You couldn't say anything because they would arrest you. The rich stay rich and the poor, perhaps even poorer. Since COVID, the lives of Cubans are shit. cocaine-based gets popular in Cuba, as does crystal meth. I'm confused in terms of like, you know, like US dollar.

Like how much could they sell trafficking in their profit? Like profit margins can't be that high. No, they're selling like tiny amounts. And I think it's, the accusation is it's mostly like Cubans now based in Florida who were just shipping small amounts of gear, like for peanuts. But that is changing. You can make more selling in Florida. Like why?

Well, you would, yeah, you would think but I think this is more like really artisanal familial like groups, you know, like trying to earn a few bucks of people that are stuck. Because everyone needs foreign currency and estate pensions are so low

that everyone is turned out onto the black market. It's actually, to let go off on a tangent, it's one of the most interesting things that's happening now is that supposedly equal society is maybe one of the most unequal on earth because it basically divided between

the families who can get remittances from the states or Canada and those who don't. And those who don't are often black and those who do are often white. And there's the huge racial divide as well, which is a whole other part of this. So you've heard how the drugs are starting to get into the country. People are starting to take the drugs. But in April 2022, we get that kind of small-time trafficking network busted by Cuban intelligence per today's cold open. This is the first public admission of the presence of chemical on Cuba's streets. Some folks call it a papel or paper because of how it's made and it is not nice. It is usually

some combination of chemical oil, acetone, synthetic cannabis and perhaps traces of fentanyl, although I've read sources claiming there is now a more potent version containing formaldehyde, benzos and even veterinary anesthetics. know which version you were smoking every night while you were there? And can you tell the listeners what it felt like? I tell you what, right? So one of the days that we were there, I can't remember if I mention it now in the script. I'm probably going to mention it further down, but we go to pick up drugs in this really poor corner of Vana. And then we unwrapped these little bales of crack cocaine, basically. And then the guy that I'm with is, I'm like, well, let's just

flush it down the toilet. I don't want to get stuck. stuck with like some fucking class A drugs in the middle of a vaner by the cops. He's like, nah, I'm going to take that. And then I would later find out that half the guys I was hanging around with were addicted to crack. Were you able to expanse the crack? How does Harper usually dispatch reports say you need a receipt or? Everything can be put through as some kind of expense, right?

As I'm sure you know from the field. So, yeah, including fake cigarettes. Yeah, so that was cool. and I slowly started wondering why my guy would ask to meet me at like 1 or 2 p.m. That's why. Anyway, according to Cuban customs, the adiwana, this stuff comes from the States, right? Mostly by air, packages of breakfast cereal, disposable diapers, and even Pillsbury Brownie mix in one example.

And then it is synthesized into a spray bottle, which I'm told is worth around $2,000 to dealers. And then it is sprayed onto sheets of, paper or card, hence paper, and it's divided into small tabs, like acid, basically. There might be 400 tabs on a single sheet of paper, which is then stuffed down the tip of a cigarette and smoked for around 30 cents a hit. You smoke the cigarette, and a few seconds later, lights out. In June 2024, in a sign of how things are beginning to fray across Cuba, an event organized by the Union of Young Communists in Cerro, that's actually the

area that I just said I picked up drugs in, descends into chaos where members of rival gangs show up and get into violent clashes. Authorities report two injuries, other six, nobody dies, but this is a striking act of violence, organized violence in a country where such things are pretty much unheard of. By August 2024, the problem of Kimiko is getting bad enough that the national TV show Roundtable, Meso Rotanda, airs an episode. entitled Cuba against drugs. But the crime associated with narcotics is beginning to soar. Petty theft, assault, gang violence, domestic attacks, especially the latter, all climb. Cuba says all of this stuff is coming in from Americans. But it's a pretty simple thing to make.

And I was told while I was there that there are gangs cooking the stuff up in towns just outside Havana, one in particular, which I shouldn't mention actually until the story coming. out. Nobody would take me there, but I did speak to one guy, a former international baseball player who deals it and then told me the same. That was a pretty weird day actually hanging out with all these guys were like wearing their baseball outfits all around town. Anyway. Anyway, they're going to spread the product, you know, advertise. Yeah, I suppose it's some kind of, it's like the Warriors, man. Anyway, in September 2024, the BBC runs a report about a 19 year old from Centro Havana who is stabbed to death. in an apparent gang-related killing. Quote, the violence is getting out of hand,

says the dead boy's sister. They're basically gangs, and they fall out with each other as gangs. That's where it's all coming from, these killings and deaths of young people. So all of this is happening before this year's crisis hits, right? And then in January, 26, the Trump administration decides it's going to strangle Cuba altogether,

cutting off oil and causing all kinds of. of mayhem. Blackups run up to 24 hours of time in Havana and much longer elsewhere. Trucks don't pick up the trash and rivers of green, gray slime are just running down the streets from mini landfills that audibly hum with flies and mosquitoes. Nobody could sleep at night. Everybody's going mad and around half the island at any time is sick with dengue, chika, Zika or good old-fashioned dysentery. I land in the country, me, you're, humble host in the third week of June, by which time things are properly collapsing. And I spend the first two days we get out getting any sleep at all. And then I get sick and I remain some kind of sick

throughout the trip. I'm speaking to my neighbours in central O'bana and they can't sleep either. Their kids aren't going to school. Everyone is mad and getting into arguments, fistfights in the street. One day I witnessed an attempted carjacking like right below my balcony. and the crowd is grabbing the guy and beating the living crap out of him. Everybody is depressed, desperate for food. No wonder so many of them are turning to Kimiko, because it's one of the few things that will guarantee you to be unconscious. And as much as the Cuban state has always had a crazy intelligence sector,

military cops and a sprawling network of informants, I was told there's a phrase in Havana, it's not di any fissuras, like it doesn't have cracks, right? but I don't see much evidence of it. I know that most people are playing clothes, right? But folks were pretty happy to tell me how terrible the country and the regime is. At one point, a guy is absolutely teeing off on Diaz Canal, the current president, right in front of the main police station.

As I was there, the libretta was just about functioning the ration card, but not really, breadlines and cues to get money from banks. They're snaking around entire city, box and there is a whole part of Havana that gets converted into a giant open-air hawkers market each day, people selling everything from dick pills to knackard radios and kids' clothes. And then each night, the nightmare of not sleeping starts all over again. I actually spoke to Harvard Professor Eric Zhao a couple of weeks ago and he told me how living for the hour or two of power each day is like constantly screwing up your circadian rhythm. It's actually as a zirisier.

if you're a baby. You know, like babies, they just wake up, fall asleep at random times a day because they don't have that rhythm. So you end up sleeping at weird times. You like leave your bedside lamp on just in case the light comes back on at 2 a.m. and you can cook and clean and wash your clothes for whatever it is that you've got until it all claps out again. Everyone is getting sick and you are generally losing your mind. It's not cool stuff. The overall feeling of a place where the state has just vacated the space. entirely. Visit BetMGM

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about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connects Ontario at 1-866-531-2,600 to speak to an advisor. Free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. If I were a betting man, I would say that the likeliest outcome of all this is that Cuba descends into some kind of Haiti-style situation, like we mentioned briefly up top, where gangs take over the streets and you have this point of no return where even if the regime is ousted somehow, and it actually looks like they're going to hold on. Perhaps something like what's happened in Venezuela since Maduro was taken in January, you'll just get this continued decay, drug use, violent crime on the streets. I actually spoke to a

friend of mine who's still living there now yesterday, and he's really worried about the illness thing. He thinks cholera is just around the corner. People are starting to get like real Victorian-level diseases. As part of my research, I spoke to the activist John Lindsay Poland. He tracks weapons across Latin America. He says that if people are organizing into cliques and starting to exploit their neighbors, this could get a lot worse very quickly. Quote, in both Haiti and Mexico, you see this phenomenon of people praying on one another. So it's one thing to lose the community spirit. The police and the soldiers must have guns. So if they're not being paid, then their guns are probably on the market. I mean, at this point, it's probably useful to remind everyone where Cuba

actually is. Well, yeah, man, I mean, it's like the last 10 minutes of a two-part series. I feel like that's a good timing. It makes sense. Yeah, it's a good nut graph, eh? So you've got Cancun. It's just over 100 miles to the west. Haiti is a similar distance to the east. Florida famously is 90 miles north. And then you have all the wild west countries of Central America just to the south, plus Jamaica, right, which is always roiling with gang crime. And the criminal financial hub of the Cayman Islands. And all these places are where the Castro supposedly have stashed their wealth over the years. Surely their cartels are eyeing Cuba up. And if nothing is done to stop this slide, I could easily see it falling into total pandemonium.

I get to my apartment then in the third week of June. It's around 4 a.m. right when I arrive. At my street, as I mentioned in that really cool thing that I did at the start of the show, is Khage Neptuno. It's in complete darkness. My host, who also lives in the building, comes to welcome me. The taxi's wheels are crunching over rubble and trash. It looks like a war zone, right?

The buildings are crumbling. That's like the most, you know, foreign observance of Havana. And the first thing this guy says to me, don't go out at this time of night. It's not safe. Don't carry your belongings around. And he seems like pretty scared. Like he's responsible for this bozo foreign tourists and he doesn't want me to get into any trouble on his watch. So this is the first time hearing that you received words of caution.

Did not realize that. Yeah. I mean, I actually received many, including on a night in the same place that I end up walking home from and getting jump. Anyway, after a couple of nights, right, I haven't slept, I'm going nuts. It's very amazing how quickly you lose your mind. And I just like, say, screw it, I'm going to walk around in the darkness. And I find out, I discover that I quite like it, actually. You're strolling around in this hollowed out, silent place.

I mean, of course, it's incredibly sad. everything, but when you spend every night not sleeping and then all day interviewing drug dealers and addicts and people who also cannot sleep or work, but crucially, also cannot just, like, get on a flight and go home like you can, it's quite nice to be alone with your faults, even if it's supposedly a dangerous thing to do. Before long, I'm walking around in Centro O'Banna for an hour or two almost every evening, and I'm getting lazy, right? I'm listening to podcasts and audiobooks, convincing myself that I'm working, actually, that this is good work, and these evening walks are in fact part of my incredibly important journalistic assignment, TM, in Cuba.

I walk right through the middle of the supposedly roughest parts of town in the wee hours, ignoring people I see, some of them just sitting around lighting coal fires or just trying to catch an hour or two of sleep on their stoop. I walk along the Malikon, where middle-aged men are casting their lions in search of tomorrow's food. I walk along the rampa, the grand, mottled old Budavada Bidado, where diplomats, rich kids, Nevada's last tiny clique of tourists and making merry amid the madness. It's in Bidatta where I'm supposed to be on the night for July,

attending the Jazz Street Festival, something fun in the sadness, I think, perhaps a chance to interview some musicians to get that folks dancing and drinking through the crisis part of the story. So, I walk 15 minutes up the road to a grill restaurant, does decent chicken and rice, and it has pretty reliable Wi-Fi,

which is almost unheard of in Nevada. I'm sat there, though, when the monsoon blows in. And the rain is so intense that I spend the next three hours at my table, just scrolling, reading stories, finally giving up on my jazz night and decided I'm just going to walk home when the place chuck's out around 11. The owner, whom I've met a couple of times previous, he says, don't go out, get a bicycle taxi home. But I ignore him. I turn the corner onto Neptuno, look up the stars, pleasing the unshrouded by the light pollution of the city. And then, thump, I'm down. My phone is gone.

gone, so is my wallet. The headphones, I don't know, forget them, they're somewhere else. I've left in the street bleeding from my leg, my head is throbbing and my side is covered in dog shit. And all I'm doing is begging my attackers to buy the phone back often because I realize in that moment that it's got all the interviews from the past three weeks and I never even thought to transfer them onto my laptop. Whoops, okay, okay, I think, screw this, night over. I get to the apartment, chew a sleeping pill and kind of nod off. And when I wake up a few hours later, there is a merciful moment when I've forgotten the whole thing. And then I see that my leg is stuck to the sheets of blood and my finger is backwards and my head hurts and I nigh on soil myself

over all these lost interviews. So I shower and head on to Neptune, asking if anybody has heard of a stolen iPhone on the market. And of course, because there's a pasty white foreigner wandering about potentially offering big cash, I've soon got a posse of guys offering to go on the for a price. That was my advice, I'm pretty sure. It's, as you're about to find out, quite fine advice. I retraced my steps to where it happened. Nothing.

I mean, why would the phone be laying there in the middle of the street? And then I go to a police station just down the road and explain what happened. They're actually pretty cool about it. And one of them offers to walk me to the spot and see if he can figure it out. We get to the crossroads where it happened and he looks up and he points at a CTV camera. And then with comedy time and he says, but there was a blackout, so it won't have worked. Cool. Then I ask a local that I've been working on translations with, but she gets scared. This is all sounding too much for me. She writes me on

WhatsApp. I can't get into this stuff. I'm sorry, but I'm out. And then I head to another pal agrees to meet me that afternoon. Turns out he's spent the night in a haze of drugs and booze, which does actually sound quite tempting when I'm sat at my desk and my leg looks like beef tataki. We hook up with a local guy. We'd actually interviewed for the story, this kind of street kid, and he immediately takes us on a tour around the city, showing us where folks trade stolen phones like mine. We walk along the parki fraternity into Old Havana,

bobbing and weaving its half-millennial-old streets, so he meets this mean guy, right? He's sat on a stoop, he's drinking beer. It's the middle of the day. Nothing from him. So our friend takes us to the Barrio Los Situos, So particularly rough and tumble corner of Centroavana beneath buildings that look like they'll fall any moment. Cubans, by the way, they call these things static miracles.

Pretty cool phrase. To rows, we go along rows and rows of informal storefronts and market stores that I'd never even known existed. Some sell phone batteries, others cases, circuit boards, screens, chargers. Basically, walk along here and you can build a Frankenstein's monster of Oppos, Samsung's and other brand. but there are not many iPhones. My pal shows him his own cell and we're laughing. The guy taking us on the tour has changed his WhatsApp name to searching for an iPhone 14.

It becomes kind of fun, right? Him taking us deep into the belly. It becomes kind of fun, right? Him taking us deep into the belly of Ivana's illegal markets, the backstreet citadels of Inventor, but after a few hours we have found nothing. Pay the guy for his time and head back to the, the apartment empty-handed, coming clean with my editor about the whole thing. To his credit,

he tells me not to worry, but also definitely not to keep clambering about the underworld trying to get my phone back. Neither does he think I should go to the cops. I am, after all, officially a tourist. Quote, I can't recommend trying that. I really don't think it's worth the risk. Given all you said about the situation there and what you've already been through, be safe. The next guy I go to the cops. Central Alabama's main station is this large blue and white painted colonial fault-looking thing, It's close to my place. I wait there before a while, before this officer, this big, chubby, ovuncular guy.

He takes me into his office and I explain what's happened. In the past, crimes against foreigners. Remember, I'm still ostensibly a tourist to him. Would have been taken extremely seriously. But all this officer does is kind of shrug his shoulders and tell me that, quote, it's getting dangerous here now, very bad. This denunciar, the announcement,

this kind of like reporting crime, It goes on for a while. And when we're done, I ask if I can have a printout for my insurance. It just points of this contraption on his desk, just this rusted, like metal printer. Looks like the kind of thing Gutenberg would have printed a Bible on. And he says, no I lose, no power. This is all becoming a big flipping waste of time, I figure.

And given I'm still pretty shook up from the mugging and my girlfriend would quite rightly suggest I shouldn't be staying in my rough neighborhood, given that I've just been walking up and down, offering large sums of US dollar for my first. I decide, screw this, I'm going to fly to Mexico. So I pack all my stuff and I head to the airport in a taxi. But when I get to the idle Mexico office, the guy there tells me he can't print a ticket because, guess what?

Noai Luce, not even at the airport. I'm beginning to lose my mind at this point, so I head back into the city. And instead of going back to apartment, I check into a lovely boutique hotel on the Malacom. Fact check though, beginning, like you were losing your mind like a week before this. Yeah, I would say three. I mean, it's actually incredible. And this is what I was speaking to the Harvard guy about, that I look back at the map of Havana now, and I'm like,

oh, I'd love to go there. I'd love to go here and see that and do that. I had nearly a month. And what was going on? I was nuts, man. Literally jumping around my bedroom, like, what is it, Michael Sheen in Apocalypse Now? Like it was actually that.

Anyway, so this place is owned by some kind of famous musician as much I can make out. It's got a rooftop bar and the lights are almost always on jackpot. I mean, this is the case for rich people in the Vana. It doesn't really affect them. I check into the nicest room, overlooking the Caribbean. I seem to be the only guest. I watched some FIFA World Cup on the TV with all the staff. I made a fellow report on the roof for drinks.

He tells me that, to be honest, if he was my editor, he'd be licking his lips at all this mugging stuff. a perfect example of how crazy things are getting in Cuba this year. I tell him I suppose he's right and then spend the night frantically scribbling notes and paraphrases from like 50 interviews I've done. Dude, what the hell? You're giving us a reporter credit. I told you this immediately. This is my immediate response when you were freaking out about losing all those interviews.

And you're made, is this a made up character? Are you like doing a composite character? I told you this. I have the WhatsApp. We can go through Dale. Find the WhatsApp chaps. put this in there right now so there's proof of me being like you can just do this make this the story come on okay okay okay that guy knows who he is and he listens to the show actually so i'm just

going to tell him outright sorry Danny got there first i'll have to decredit you for what you told me on that come on anyway the next day i head out and i try to re-up on interviews i've done basically about a chinatown murder that's going to be the foundation for my harper's magazine story But in the afternoon, I'm sitting on the sideboard with this young guy. We're talking and all of a sudden I can't feel my legs. Next minute I'm puking in the street. I feel like I've got radiation poison or something. The guy takes me on the back of his moped to my hotel

and I spend a full day not being able to move, literally crawling along the floor just to use a toilet. I do not drink or eat nada. This goes on for another two days. And on the third, I am just well enough to take my flight to Panama and then to Buenos Aires. And then a few days after that, I found out from the doctor that I've got dengue, but also Zika, how good. So, guys, there is the story of my descent into Madness in Cuba and also Cuba's descent into drug and crime chaos this year. It is not a happy story.

It probably won't end well. But I hope I've at least entertained you with my own misery. to close today's show out, I'm going to turn to Dirty Havana Trilogy again because it is brilliant, right? And it really inspired me while I was in Cuba, sweating and struggling to hold down food and just generally losing my mind. You live in a fantasy world and the fantasy world collapses. It's not the fantasy's fault. After all, salvation was always being promised for the future, the next generation, tomorrow. It's not your fault either.

It's collective karma, that's all. So, that is the story of how organized crime prospered, then didn't, then allegedly, maybe did, and then did a bit and now threatens to take over the entire country of Cuba. Don't call it a comeback. And please do not, under any circumstances, Instagram your crimes. And I didn't even tell you about the guy with the 18-inch member that you can read in my Harper's magazine story. Thanks, guys. For 50 years, Canadians have wondered what the names of IKEA furniture mean.

Like Natopa, the guardrail for children's beds. Natopa means giving your favorite person room to grow. It means their safety and your piece of... No. In Swedish, not aapa means night monkey. IKEA, 50 years of Swedishness at home. Look, he's wearing little pajamas. So cute.