



1 / 14 Chevron Chevron Photograph by Sebastian Liste / NOOR Young people hang out on Avenida de los Presidentes in the Vedado neighborhood of Havana. March, 2015.

In this week’s magazine, Jon Lee Anderson writes about the entrepreneur Hugo Cancio, a former Marielito who has positioned himself as a sought-after intermediary for American investors, politicians, and celebrities travelling to the new Cuba. Describing the cultural changes that have taken place in the country's capital in the months since the United States and Cuba agreed to normalize relations, Anderson writes:

Havana appears much the same as it has for decades—people at loose ends, distressed buildings—but there has been an explosion of small private enterprises and, with them, pockets of encouraging prosperity…. People are better dressed; there are more cars on the road; and everywhere there are new restaurants and bars and hostels, where Cubans rent rooms to foreign visitors…. The city’s harbor is being refurbished to accommodate U.S. cruise ships…. Havana’s night life, once moribund, is alive again.

The Brazil-based Spanish photographer Sebastian Liste travelled with Anderson to Havana. In the series above, he captures the city’s street life, youth culture, and burgeoning cultural spaces like La Fábrica de Arte Cubano, a venue in a converted peanut-oil factory that hosts dancers, artists, and musicians. Thanks to such initiatives, Liste said, new generations of Cubans “are getting the freedom and spaces to create.”