From MSN's Slate:

We move outside and Sanchez starts talking about Cuba itself. He shows me two maps, one of prisons in Cuba before the revolution and one now. The new map shows perhaps 10 times as many prisons. "We never used to be a country of crime," says Sanchez. "Now we have one of the largest incarceration rates in the world." Thousands—mostly suspected prostitutes, he says—are jailed under a law against "dangerousness," a vague Minority Report-type provision that essentially criminalizes intentions.

Sanchez's work is well-regarded. But it's impossible to verify his numbers, since, as he points out, Cuba keeps its incarceration rates secret and prohibits inspections by human rights groups or the Red Cross—the only country in the Western hemisphere to do so.

"Welcome to our gulag," Sanchez says, pointing to the map. As others have explained to me, it's not that there are thousands of political prisoners. It's that so much of regular life—from selling a car to owning a VCR—has been made illegal. So just about everybody breaks the law. They are pushed into doing so because of the absurdly low state salaries (about 260 pesos or $10 per month). Cubans get free monthly rations—in addition to free education and health care—but it's not enough, so just about everybody in one way or another works in the black market. (One example: When I was driving, I saw farmers offering peanuts along the side of the road. Then, at one point, they ran off into the bushes. Turns out a police car was driving by.)

[...]Castro is like the owner of a plantation. He controls the jobs, he controls access to education and he controls health care. Those who are revolutionaries have access and those who are counter-revolutionaries don't; and he decides who is which.

Sure makes one appreciate the freedoms we have in the Bahamas.