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One of those events you can see looming on the historic horizon is a Second Mariel Boatlift of Cubans trying to get to Miami before the U.S. wises up and rescinds the wet foot dry foot law that gives all 11 million remaining Cubans near-automatic right of asylum if they can set one foot on American dry land.
Down through history, Cuban have usually been relatively high-achievers by Latin American standards. For example, 90 years ago the world chess champion was a Cuban, Capablanca.
Cuba has some real geographic advantages over the rest of the Caribbean that attracted middle class immigrants rather than just agricultural laborers (as who mostly came to Puerto Rico). Most Caribbean islands have their main port on the south side of the island to give ships shelter from strong winter storms from the north, but Havana is a good enough natural harbor that it can be on the north side of the island and thus be cooler due to northerly breezes. So Cuba was long the favorite destination o