Why Cuba Is Sitting On The Most Valuable Land In Human History

Summary

The video argues that Cuba’s extraordinary strategic position and natural resources have repeatedly attracted foreign powers, but that this value has rarely translated into lasting prosperity for ordinary Cubans.

Why Cuba has been strategically valuable

• Cuba lies beside the main passages into and out of the Gulf of Mexico and near a major Atlantic–Caribbean shipping route.
• Havana’s deep, defensible harbor made it an essential gathering point for Spanish treasure fleets. From 1561, ships carrying wealth from the Americas assembled there before crossing the Atlantic.
• Britain captured Havana in 1762. At the 1763 peace settlement, Spain recovered the city by ceding Florida—an example of how valuable the harbor and its position were.
• The same geography later made Cuba a strategic Cold War outpost. In 1962, Soviet nuclear missiles on the island brought the United States and Soviet Union close to nuclear war.

Sugar, slavery, and foreign control

• After Haiti’s revolution disrupted the world’s leading sugar colony, Cuba’s fertile plains and incoming investment helped fuel a major sugar boom.
• By 1860, Cuba produced roughly a third of the world’s sugar. The industry relied on enslaved Africans and, later, indentured Chinese workers. Slavery was abolished in Cuba in 1886.
• The United States became Cuba’s main export market and invested heavily in sugar. After the Spanish-American War, Cuba gained independence under conditions that gave the United States the right to intervene and to lease land for naval stations.
• The 1903 lease established the U.S. base at Guantánamo Bay. The video says the annual rent is now about $4,085 and that Cuba has not cashed the checks for decades, apart from one reportedly deposited by mistake.

Revolution and reliance on powerful patrons

• After Fidel Castro’s revolution took power in 1959, the government nationalized major American-owned businesses. The United States imposed an embargo, and a failed 1961 exile invasion helped push Cuba closer to the Soviet Union.
• For decades, the Soviet Union supported Cuba by buying its sugar at favorable prices and supplying discounted oil. That support helped fund improvements in health care, education, literacy, and life expectancy.
• But the economy remained dependent on a dominant external partner and on sugar. The 1970 effort to produce a record harvest disrupted other parts of the economy and still fell short of its target.
• When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Cuba lost its principal market, oil supply, and subsidies. The video describes a severe economic crisis: trade with the former Soviet bloc plunged, the economy contracted, food consumption fell, and sugar production never recovered to earlier levels.
• Cuba subsequently relied more on tourism, money sent by Cubans abroad, and overseas medical work—especially arrangements involving Venezuela and subsidized oil. The video presents this as another cycle of dependence on a single partner.

Minerals and Cuba’s present-day predicament

• The eastern region around Moa contains nickel- and cobalt-rich laterite soils. The video says Cuba has some of the world’s largest cobalt reserves and was the fifth-largest cobalt producer in 2024.
• A Cuban state–Canadian company joint venture has mined nickel and cobalt since 1994, making the operation an important source of foreign currency.
• In the video’s account of 2026, Cuba faces prolonged power failures, reduced Venezuelan oil supplies, new U.S. pressure on countries supplying oil, and sanctions affecting foreign businesses. Sherritt suspended participation in its Cuban ventures, while the Moa operation was already reducing production.
• The video also describes a major population decline and a large outflow of people, particularly young people. It notes that estimates of Cuba’s current population differ.

The central debate and conclusion

• The Cuban government emphasizes the effects of the U.S. embargo and sanctions, especially restrictions on trade, finance, and oil.
• Critics, including some economists in Cuba, point to domestic policies and structural problems: a state-dominated economy, repeated reliance on one main external partner, restrictions on private business, distorted currency arrangements, and limits on what farmers could sell and at what prices.
• The video does not present these explanations as mutually exclusive. Its broader conclusion is that Cuba’s location, agricultural land, harbor, and minerals have repeatedly benefited empires, companies, and foreign allies, while Cubans themselves have often received little of the resulting value.

Speakers and sources featured

• Speaker: An unnamed narrator delivering the video’s historical and economic account. No other on-camera speakers are indicated in the subtitles.
• Sources and viewpoints cited or paraphrased:
  • Cuban government statements, including its explanation of the effects of U.S. sanctions
  • Cuba’s statistics office, for population figures
  • Fidel Castro, regarding the Guantánamo rent checks
  • The International Monetary Fund, for an estimate of Soviet assistance
  • The U.S. Geological Survey, for cobalt reserves and production
  • Sherritt International, regarding its Cuban ventures
  • Independent demographers, for alternative population estimates
  • An unnamed Cuban-born economist, on the scope of Cuba’s economic reforms
  • Economists in Cuba, on domestic economic policy and structural problems