Privations during the Special Period included extreme reductions of rationed foods at state-subsidized prices, severe energy shortages, and the shrinking of an economy forcibly overdependent on Soviet imports.

[2] The period radically transformed Cuban society and the economy, as it necessitated the introduction of organic agriculture, decreased use of automobiles, and overhauled industry, health, and diet countrywide.

[citation needed] Once the restored Russian Federation emerged from the former Soviet Union, its administration immediately made clear that it had no intention of delivering petroleum that had been guaranteed to the island by the USSR; this resulted in a decrease in Cuban consumption by 20% of its previous level within two years.

[7] The early stages of the Special Period were defined by a general breakdown in transportation and agricultural sectors, fertilizer and pesticide stocks (both of those being manufactured primarily from petroleum derivatives), and widespread food shortages.

[citation needed] Australian and other permaculturists arriving in Cuba at the time began to distribute aid and taught their techniques to locals, who soon implemented them in fields, raised beds, and urban rooftops across the nation.

[17] During the early years of the crisis, United States law allowed humanitarian aid in the form of food and medicine by private groups.

[18] The Cuban government was also forced to contract out more lucrative economic and tourism deals with various Western European and South American nations in an attempt to earn the foreign currency necessary to replace the lost Soviet petroleum via the international markets.

[citation needed] Food-wise, meat and dairy products, having been extremely fossil fuel dependent in their former factory farming methods, soon diminished in the Cuban diet.

[citation needed] In a shift notable for being generally anathema to Latin American food habits, the people of the island by necessity adopted diets higher in fiber, fresh produce, and ultimately more vegan in character.

[citation needed] The Cuban government also focused more intensely on cooperation with Venezuela once the socialist Hugo Chávez was elected president in 1998.

The documentary, The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil, states that today, farmers make more money than most other occupations.

These were torn down and the empty lots lay idle for years until the food shortages forced Cuban citizens to make use of every piece of land.

Widespread farmers' markets gave easy access to locally grown produce; less travel time required less energy use.

[28] Other reports painted an equally dismal picture, describing Cubans having to resort to eating anything they could find, from Havana Zoo animals to domestic cats.

[19] One researcher from Johns Hopkins described the Special Period as "the first, and probably the only, natural experiment, born of unfortunate circumstances, where large effects on diabetes, cardiovascular disease and all-cause mortality have been related to sustained population-wide weight loss as a result of increased physical activity and reduced caloric intake".

[6]: 71 A paper in the American Journal of Epidemiology, says that "during 1997–2002, there were declines in deaths attributed to diabetes (51%), coronary heart disease (35%), stroke (20%), and all causes (18%).

Even before the energy crisis, extended families lived in small apartments (many of which were in very poor condition) to be closer to an urban area.

Small homes were built in rural areas and land was provided to encourage families to move, to assist in food production for themselves, and to sell in local farmers' markets.

[34] These squatters, offensively termed "Palestinos" in homage to Palestinian refugees, were officially denied welfare rights because they had no formal home address.

It was a difficult shift during the Special Period to adjust to a new way of managing the transport of thousands of people to school, to work and to other daily activities.

Public transport is creative and takes on the following forms: Popular disillusionment in the economy inspired the Cuban government to revitalize the population's enthusiasm for socialism.

Castro announced a "Battle of Ideas" that attempted to emphasize human development, deemphasize economic growth, and return to the ideological spirit of the 1960s.

A comprehensive review of these effects concerning ideology, art and popular culture can be found in Ariana Hernandez-Reguant's Cuba in the Special Period.

Elsewhere, Deborah Pacini, Marc Perry, Geoffrey Baker and Sujatha Fernandes extensively wrote about Cuban rap music as a result of these transnational exchanges.

[39][40] Whereas timba music was a Cuban genre that evolved out of traditional song and jazz, emphasizing blackness and sexuality through sensual dancing and lyrics that reflected the socio-cultural situation of the period with humor [Hernandez-Reguant 2006], Cuban hip hop evolved as a socially conscious movement influenced heavily by its kin genre American hip-hop.

Nonetheless, hip hop circulated through informal networks, thus creating a small underground scene of rap enthusiasts located mostly in Havana's Eastern neighborhoods that called the attention of foreign scholars and journalists.

The lack of resources to purchase the electronic equipment to produce beats and tracks gives Cuban rap a raw feel that paralleled that of "old school" music in the US.