The Weekend Intelligence: Sleepless in Havana

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  The Economist.

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  I'm Rosie Blau, and today on the Weekend Intelligence, my colleague Sarah Birke takes us inside Cuba.

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  Before we get to what she found, I wanted to find out why she went and why now.

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  Sarah, you've been following this story for a long time.

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  Why did you decide to go to Cuba?

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  Well, Rosie, ever since January, there's been intense pressure from the Trump administration on Cuba,

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  that's made life incredibly difficult for Cubans.

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  And I went in February and was sort of shocked at the state of the country already then:

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  blackouts, shortages of food, incredibly difficult living circumstances for people.

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  And I've been talking to lots of Cubans since then on WhatsApp,

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  and there was this growing sense of urgency, a sense of people being really squished.

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  And there was one contact in particular who I was having almost daily contact with,

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  who I'd wake up and there'd be messages from him about the prices of eggs having risen,

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  or the number of hours the power hadn't come on for.

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  And so we've been trying to figure out, me and producer Gemma,

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  how we could get these Cuban voices to air

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  and let people hear from Cubans themselves what the past six months have been like.

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  And how easy was it to do that?

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  Well, first of all, the idea was to do it remotely,

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  to have him send us voice notes or to do phone calls,

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