Dispatches
Free
Short editorial pieces on the country in transition — politics, sanctions, day-to-day shifts.
About
What Cuba Journal is.
Cuba Journal covers Cuba in transition — the country, the business climate, the cultural moment, and the people who pay attention to it.
Cuba Journal started as a personal publication in 2015, during the Obama-era opening that briefly made Havana the most-discussed city in the Americas. Between 2015 and 2017 the publication shipped roughly a thousand posts: travel features, cigar coverage, marathon reports, op-eds, photo essays, and a steady stream of dispatches as the political weather changed. The site went dormant when the opening closed.
It is back, in 2026, with the same editorial perspective and a wider remit. The political moment looks different — a collapse, a transition, a question mark — but the underlying interest is the same: Cuba is small, dense, layered, and almost always misunderstood by visitors. We try not to misunderstand it.
The publication has eight editorial pillars: Dispatches, Travel, Rum & Cigars, Art & Music, Business, Invest, Watch, and Photography. Seven of them are free. Invest is paywalled, written for lawyers, compliance officers, fund LPs, and operators — the people who need to act on what they read about Cuba, not just read about it.
The eight pillars
Travel
Free
High-end travel features — hotels, regions, operators, the changing logistics of getting there.
Rum & Cigars
Free
Terroir, distilleries, cigar houses, supply chains under sanction — the heritage trade.
Art & Music
Free
Cuban artists, concerts, exhibitions, the Havana Biennial; son, salsa, jazz, trova heritage.
Business
Free
Free reporting on Cuban and Cuba-facing companies, deals, executives, regulatory enforcement, and the economic conditions operators work under.
Watch
Free
Reels, Shorts, and TikTok packages from the Cuba Journal Media Factory with editorial framing.
Photography
Free
Galleries by subject — reefs, streets, faces, vehicles, weather, the country in light.
Invest
Subscribers
Recurring trackers, brief tables, and source-document analysis for lawyers, compliance officers, fund LPs, and operators. Subscribers only.
How we work
Editorial, not news-feed
We don't try to be the wire. Stories run when there's something to say and a way to say it well. Dispatches are short by design (300–600 words), features take as long as they take.
Source-grade, not opinion-first
Every paid Invest brief cites the gaceta, the OFAC release, the Federal Register notice, or the operator who said it. The free editorial product holds the same standard.
Historically honest
The archive that built this site is from a closed window — Obama-era Cuba, 2015–2017. We say so. Footage and photographs from that era are framed as historical material, not as current Cuba.
No autopublish
AI assists. Humans sign off. Every published article — including AI-drafted Dispatches — passes through a human editor before it goes live. The Invest tier is human-written end to end.
And what Cuba Journal is not.
A short list of rules we keep to ourselves.
- We do not run sponsored content disguised as editorial.
- We do not call Cuba the “Pearl of the Antilles.”
- We do not pretend 2015 footage is happening this week.
- We do not allow comments. (We answer email.)
Editor
Simon Schase
Founded Cuba Journal in 2015. Writes Dispatches, edits every Invest brief, and answers most reader email personally. Reach the desk at editor@cubajournal.com.
Stay in touch
Subscribe — newsletter or analyst tier.
The free newsletter recaps the week's Dispatches. Sign up here. For analyst-grade coverage, go straight to Invest.