Things are definitely getting dire in Cuba and no, the NYT isn't sensationalizing it here. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/20/world/americas/cuba-economy.html?smid=tw-share

I saw some people get mad a while back when US media orgs started publishing articles on Cuba noting with alarm that there was discussion of more urban farming to confront the crisis. 'oh they've been doing that, they'll be fine', etc.

that's unfortunately divorced from reality

Cuba has been importing the *majority* of its food for a long time now and even at the peak of urban farming and other emergency measures in the 90s, Cuba was still importing food and barely scrapping by. people were rail thin.

Poor Cubans especially will face the worst of it

the Diaz-Canel government has yet to face a crisis like this before and the last time the Special Period in the 1990s made food as scarce as it may be about to get, it took Fidel personally going into the streets to defuse it (which even then was a gamble on his part)

Trump's sanctions are just making this worse

even without sanctions, given corona's effect on tourism, Cuba doesn't just need an end to sanctions, it needs aid. significant amounts of aid

at present, of the two candidates, Biden is the only one talking about easing sanctions