Mailyn Salabarria | The Hidden Path to Tyranny
“You can vote your way into socialism, but you can only shoot your way out. They’re never going to leave power.”
Timothy Allen sits down with Mailyn Salabarria, a Cuban refugee and liberty advocate, to talk about what “voting with your feet” looks like when it is not a lifestyle choice but a survival move. Mailyn describes leaving Cuba with two suitcases and $200, then having to learn how freedom actually works once she arrived in the US.
From there, the conversation gets darker: why Cuba is not “quaint,” how the country is actively disintegrating (hospitals, power, crime, morality), and how the regime sustains itself through censorship, embedded informants, and a tourist-facing propaganda veneer. Mailyn also explains how remittances and “private” businesses still loop back into state control, and why she sees Venezuela as a key pressure point for Cuba’s future.
They close on a guarded optimism: Florida as a lower-government bubble, a possible US fracturing scenario, and the surprising momentum for freer-market politics across Latin America, with the hope that the trend eventually reaches Cuba too.
Enjoy the conversation.