The collapse of European communism beginning in 1989 created many new difficulties for Castro's Cuba. According to historian Max Azicri, "the collapse of European socialism confronted the Cuban regime with a survival crisis." Despite having renewed economic ties with Latin America, more than 85 percent of Cuba's foreign trade was with Communist-bloc nations. When their governments began to embrace free markets, Cubans were forced to rework almost all of their existing trade agreements. The Soviet Union had been the world's largest consumer of sugar, and when it broke apart in 1991 Cuba lost its best customer, not to mention its primary supplier of machinery, spare parts, petroleum, and grain. Ever since, the Castro regime has scrambled to find new customers for Cuban sugar and new suppliers of manufactured goods and oil, but so far it has failed to find enough of either...