Three weeks ago Hurricane Melissa devastated eastern Cuba. From Havana to Santiago, regular people, churches and cooperatives are making donations to help people rebuild, complementing the state-led recovery effort.

Also:

• A third of Cubans have fallen ill from mosquito-borne viruses this year
• With no visa, major Cuban musician forced to cancel U.S. concerts
• Uptick in Canadian tourism bookings to Cuba this winter

After Melissa, Recovery Through Solidarity

​Hurricane Melissa damaged over 90,000 homes and hundreds of health clinics, according the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

The state has transported hundreds of tons of food to eastern Cuba and sent thousands of engineers to affected areas to restore electricity and water.

​Dozens of countries, as well as international organizations like World Central Kitchen and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, have made donations.

But with so many in need, Cubans throughout the country have also stepped up to support each other. The island’s grueling economic crisis makes this solidarity all the more striking.

“The moment we heard a hurricane was coming, we started thinking about how we were going to help,” one donor said. “The least we can do is share what we have.”

​Watch our video about how Cubans and the state are working to rebuild together.

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In Other News

A third of Cubans have fallen ill from mosquito-borne viruses this year. Cuba's top epidemiologist Dr. Francisco Durán said last week that the Ministry of Public Health estimates that around a third of the population has contracted chikungunya, dengue and other mosquito-borne diseases this year. On Wednesday he announced thousands are currently hospitalized. Mosquito-borne virus cases began rising in Matanzas province this July and have since spread throughout the country. Several medications developed in Cuba are undergoing investigations and clinical trials for their success in treating dengue and chikungunya patients, health authorities said. Garbage collection and fumigation have dramatically declined in recent years due to the economic crisis and fuel shortages. “Maximum pressure” sanctions in place since Trump’s first term continue to cost the state billions of dollars a year, according to economists.

With no visa, major Cuban musician forced to cancel U.S. concerts. Cuban musician Carlos Varela canceled concerts in Miami last week after delays in receiving his U.S. visa. “I do this process every year and this is the first time something like this has happened,” he wrote on social media. Visa denials have increased since Trump imposed a partial travel ban on Cuban nationals. Varela, however, has a Spanish passport. He used to be able to travel to the U.S. with a digital visa waiver (ESTA). But due to the State Department's baseless decision to list Cuba as a “state sponsor of terrorism,” Cubans and nationals of countries with ESTA privileges who have visited Cuba must now go through the expensive, lengthy and often uncertain process of applying in person for a U.S. visa.

​Watch our video about how U.S. law punishes Europeans for visiting Cuba.

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Uptick in Canadian tourism bookings to Cuba this winter. Since its record high of 4.75 million tourists in 2018, the number of annual visitors to Cuba has tumbled. Last year just 2.2 million tourists visited the island. But at a meeting with tour operators in Toronto last week, Tourism Minister Juan Carlos García said winter bookings from Canada to Cuba were up 25% from 2024.

The record numbers from 2015 to 2018 were fundamentally caused by former President Barack Obama’s historic detente with Cuba. President Donald Trump banned cruise ships from docking in Cuba, as well as flights to every city except Havana during his first term. Several countries, including Canada and the United Kingdom, currently warn their citizens of power outages and diseases on the island, while others tell their citizens they may lose their U.S. visa waiver privilege if they choose to travel to Cuba.

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