In the early aughts, during the golden age of blogging, we rapidly learned what life in Venezuela and Cuba was like from the stellar creations of bloggers like Miguel Octavio, Daniel Duquenal, Val Prieto's team, The RealCuba, and Yoani Sanchez, among others.

Those days are largely vanished, and now we often can only guess what's happening from the imperfect medium of the news, which rarely gives us much on the texture of life in these socialist hellholes, let alone the direct connection to socialism, a word they rarely use.

But the voices from the inside are not gone.

They have moved on from written blogs to video, and a friend has sent me an amazing list of must-watch YouTube channels done by young Venezuelan and Cuban bloggers, and a few others, showing us live footage of what waiting in bread lines is like, what dealing with a communist commissar bureaucrat is like, what blackouts are like, what uncollected garbage blowing around looks like, what constant inflation and shortages are like, what the secret police all over the place are like, and what people say in private in those places. Also, there are videos, taken in secret by cell phone, showing the grotesque vulgarity and conspicuous consumption of the Castroite elites on their yachts, fountains of abundance surrounding them as the locals struggle to live on crumbs. These are truly damning.

It's an amazing slice of life made much realer by these brave young people's mastery of making video clips, done on channels, amounting to a series, and they are very active still, although my source says he wonders why some of them have not been imprisoned. One fantastic one, known as Hildina from Cuba, has recently been exiled to Trinidad.

Here is his amazing list of channels to watch for the real deal on life in Cuba and Venezuela, complete with his notes. I'll just give the links since these are channels full of important videos:

My favorite, Hildina in Cuba (in recent days exiled, currently in Trinidad)

People like this are utterly courageous truth-tellers and their voices cry out to tell us the truth. Watching them is exactly what socialist dictatorships don't want. Therefore, watch them if you can, to learn the reality about these places.

Image: Screen shot from YouTube video.