Residents in Havana, Cuba, who had been sitting in darkness for the better part of a day, poured into the streets on Wednesday night. They blocked roads with burning rubbish, erected barricades, and shouted at the government to turn the lights back on. By Thursday, the blackouts had encompassed the island in the latest round of nationwide shutdowns. Some areas are reporting power losses lasting 24 hours a day, with the capital enduring outages stretching beyond 22 hours.
Making matters worse, Cuba’s energy minister appeared on state television to explain that his country had run out of oil and fuel. The reserves, he said, were empty. Cuba produces only about 40% of its required oil. Its two largest external suppliers, Venezuela and Mexico, have entirely cut off shipments since January, when the United States tightened restrictions on fuel shipments. Since then, only one Russian tanker has reached the island. Washington said it allowed that shipment considering the humanitarian situation. After that tanker delivered oil, Havana released 2,000 prisoners.
How did things get so bad?
It all leads back to the January capture of Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro. Venezuela had for two decades been the Cuban regime’s essential backer, sending heavily subsidized oil that kept the Cuban economy from collapse. Those shipments had already been declining for years as Venezuela’s own crisis deepened, but Havana had built its survival around the supplies that continued.
But U.S. pressure is growing.
Last week, President Donald Trump signed an executive order extending sanctions against Cuba. This action means that any foreign company doing business with GAESA, the military conglomerate that controls much of the economy, will face American riposte. GAESA’s foreign partners have until June 5 to sever ties or face secondary sanctions.
In response, Cuban authorities are showing more willingness to negotiate. Still, they have yet to demonstrate readiness for any meaningful concessions. They fear that genuinely opening their political system to true reform will lead to their own demise.
Among the issues making a deal difficult is the question of who runs the island. President Miguel Diaz-Canel is a figurehead. Real authority runs through the military establishment, the Castro family, and above all through 94-year-old Raul Castro. Hence why Secretary of State Marco Rubio has been conducting discussions not with the official Cuban government but with Raul’s grandson, bypassing Diaz-Canel. That grandson, known as “Raulito,” is 41 and spent his career as his grandfather’s bodyguard. But the bottom line is that there are different factions within the regime, each with different calculations about what a deal with Washington should look like.
To stave off collapse, Havana is knocking on every door. China has stepped in with massive humanitarian aid, donating tens of thousands of tons of rice and $80 million in emergency funds while rapidly accelerating a “solar revolution.” This would see the construction of 92 solar parks to transition Cuba away from its failed, oil-dependent electrical grid. But solar panels cannot replace subsidized oil.
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The regime will now search for the minimum concessions required to ease the pressure without surrendering ultimate political authority. It wants to wait out this storm. Hence why any U.S. easing of the blockade and movement toward normalized relations needs to come with meaningful concessions. These must include the wholesale release of political prisoners, a genuine opening for civic freedoms, and the regime’s separation from its allies in China and Russia.
Washington is closer than it has ever been to a moment of real change. The time for bold action is now.