<story><title>10% of Cubans left Cuba between 2022 and 2023</title><url>https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/cuba/article290249799.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>giancarlostoro</author><text>I wonder what a sensible way forward for Cubans is, and their government. What would it take for the US to lift sanctions (I assume a radical shift within Cuba&amp;#x27;s government), and for Cuba itself (as a whole) to restructure their government in a way that would benefit them and everyone.&lt;p&gt;Cuba would be a great travel destination.&lt;p&gt;Their cigars aren&amp;#x27;t as on par anymore as far as I know, but there&amp;#x27;s potential there, Nicaragua and Dominican Republic basically make the best ones last I checked.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>aconsult1</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve been smoking cigars for the past 15 years. I was lucky enough to have smoked only cuban cigars (which are legal where I&amp;#x27;m from), so I know them very well.&lt;p&gt;Nicaragua and Dominican Republic are garbage compared to Cubans, still to this day. Several times while in the US (where I&amp;#x27;ve lived in the past few years) I tried to smoke non-cuban cigars. Not once I found something that was remotely close to the worse cuban I&amp;#x27;ve had.&lt;p&gt;My basic understanding is because of two factors: 
1. The tobacco doesn&amp;#x27;t grow anywhere else like it does in Cuba. It&amp;#x27;s an island with very specific combination of soil and weather that can&amp;#x27;t be replicated. The tobacco leafs are huge in Cuba and that makes a big difference when making a cigar which ideally should use as few leafs as possible.
2. The best workers that know how to select, blend and roll a cigar are still all in Cuba. Other countries tried to replicate but they don&amp;#x27;t come close in terms of skills and knowledge.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t have sources for the two factors above but my experience tells me it adds up.&lt;p&gt;I only heard people complimenting non-cuban cigars here in the US. Nowhere else. Which sounds fair or else the entire cigar industry would have gone bankrupt without access to the best stuff. Overtime you won&amp;#x27;t find people in the US who understands what a cuban cigar is like because they have no exposure to it.</text></comment>
<story><title>10% of Cubans left Cuba between 2022 and 2023</title><url>https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/cuba/article290249799.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>giancarlostoro</author><text>I wonder what a sensible way forward for Cubans is, and their government. What would it take for the US to lift sanctions (I assume a radical shift within Cuba&amp;#x27;s government), and for Cuba itself (as a whole) to restructure their government in a way that would benefit them and everyone.&lt;p&gt;Cuba would be a great travel destination.&lt;p&gt;Their cigars aren&amp;#x27;t as on par anymore as far as I know, but there&amp;#x27;s potential there, Nicaragua and Dominican Republic basically make the best ones last I checked.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>toast0</author><text>&amp;gt; Cuba would be a great travel destination.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s been a while since I visited places outside the US, but one of the shocking things was travel ads for Cuba everywhere.&lt;p&gt;From what I can tell, US-Cuban relations seem to be at the whim of the US President. Most of the US population doesn&amp;#x27;t care; most of the rest of the world has fine relations with Cuba, but isn&amp;#x27;t going to pressure the US. Nobody is sending missiles to Cuba anymore.</text></comment>