Dateline meets Pocho, who lives just outside Havana. The problem is - his Australian wife Kelly lives in Sydney and he's desperate to get out to join her. But he quickly finds that it's a difficult path to love.

All this time I've been getting my papers together so that I can be close to my wife. But they don't care if you're married, or if you're suffering, or how you feel. - Pocho.

Pocho has a good reason to leave, but if the Cuban socialist experiment has been so successful, then why have over a million Cubans already left? Former government insider turned dissident Oscar Espinosa Chepe thinks he knows why. He says the revolution has been betrayed.

We all dreamed of creating heaven here in Cuba, but we have only created hell. That's the sad reality. It's been a huge disappointment. It's about preserving absolute power and creating a totalitarian state that has absolutely nothing to do with socialist ideals. Oscar Espinosa Chepe, Cuban Dissident

Chepe's view is increasingly common. Even the true believers are becoming disillusioned, like the former president of the Australia - Cuba Friendship Society, John Brotherton who says:

I am saddened by what I know. I would rather not know - it would be easier for me to still be a true believer and still think things were wondrous in the garden but they just aren't.

This segment will be followed by two other investigative reports.

About International Dateline 

SBS Dateline, which began in 1984, is Australia's longest-running international current affairs program. It has a well-earned reputation for authoritative and incisive reporting. Dateline has taken the traditional way of producing TV current affairs and turned it on its head. Reporters who used to travel with a cameraperson and sound recordist now travel alone and have the responsibility of both filming and reporting their stories. The reporters became video-journalists, gaining access to people and places that the conventional camera crews cannot.