Cubans Struggle Against a Tightening US Noose

HAVANA — Cuban women cooking dinner in the dark with charcoal. Images of these scenes have become representative of the especially harsh period the country is going through at the moment, but they also highlight resourcefulness and resilience. 

“Blackouts are lasting more than 24 hours. Sometimes we get three hours of electricity, but that’s not enough time for things to cool down in the refrigerator. You have to cook what you’re going to eat that day because it will spoil. And how do you do that when you work and have to go to the city, eight kilometers away, to buy what you need?” says Caridad Curbelo Crespo. 

With the U.S. stopping other countries from selling oil to Cuba, there’s no fuel for the transport to cover those eight kilometers.  

On Jan. 29, President Donald Trump signed an executive order declaring a national emergency regarding Cuba and establishing a system of tariffs on products from countries that supply, directly or indirectly, oil to the Caribbean nation. Since then, everything has become more difficult, Curbelo says.

Two weeks after the executive order, Cuba is experiencing a critical fuel shortage. At the start of February, the Financial Post reported the country had only 15 to 20 days’ worth of oil remaining. As a result, gasoline is being rationed and most transport services have been suspended, which in turn affects distribution of food and other goods. Patients can’t get to hospitals due to lack of transportation. 

Cuba now produces about 1,000 megawatts of electricity — 38% of its daytime output — from solar panels. For the rest, it counts on oil. Cuba does produce some oil itself, but the amount is minimal. The lack of power has led to long daily blackouts, with cooking, refrigeration and food production harshly impacted. Water pumps and communications are severely affected, and school and work hours have been reduced. 

Cuba is experiencing a critical fuel shortage. The Trump administration’s stated goal is to pressure the Cuban government. The real effect, as documented by the testimonies of those who live on the island, is the collective punishment of a population already worn down by six decades of U.S. sanctions.

This type of mass “punishment is a crime,” said Carlos Fernández de Cossío, the Cuban foreign affairs minister, on X, referring to collective penalties and methods of intimidation that are prohibited under international law in the Fourth Geneva Convention.

Curbelo is 80 and lives with her brother on the road to Viñales, Pinar del Rio, in the west of the country. She is retired, but she continues to work. “We have both wanted to stay active, and our health has allowed us to do so,” Curbelo explains to Truthdig, speaking of herself and her brother. “Plus, we need that money to make ends meet, because the pension isn’t enough to live on, especially with this crisis.”

Curbelo works in an office of the Credit and Services Cooperative, an agricultural production organization in Cuba, several kilometers from her home. Her brother is a guard at a medicinal plant cooperative. When she talks about the current difficulties, she doesn’t separate work and domestic struggles: They are one and the same, she insists.

“Women feel it twice as much, because in addition to working outside the home, we also have to worry about household chores. I, for example, am the one in charge of everything: cooking, washing, cleaning, even the shopping. In my house, it was always like that, and now that we’re old, things haven’t changed.”

The blackouts, Curbelo says, have added to her burden. She normally cooks with electricity because cooking gas is rationed. “Sometimes I can only buy one gas canister a year,” she says. Now, she’s had to return to using charcoal. “It’s more work, but it’s not new to me. My mother always had her charcoal stove. The thing is, a sack of charcoal is very expensive now; 1,500 pesos [$58] is the cheapest option,” she says.

Suffocation as a strategy: The energy crisis is not an isolated phenomenon. It compounds already existing problems — inflation, currency shortages, deteriorating infrastructure — and increases the impact of financial and commercial restrictions by the United States that already make importing fuel, as well as basic supplies and medicines, expensive and difficult.

“The tightening of the U.S. blockade against Cuba is part of the Trump administration’s strategy of territorial control over the American continent,” Pável Alemán Benítez tells Truthdig. He is a professor and researcher at the University of Havana and an analyst on international affairs.

“They saw a window of opportunity in the weakening of international institutions, especially if we take into account what has happened in Gaza, where they have literally flouted the United Nations. They have tried to replicate that model of action in the Americas.”

With the Jan. 29 executive order, they are aiming for the collapse of Cuban society, a breakdown of its social fabric based on the population’s exhaustion from all the restrictions that the lack of energy imposes on daily life, Alemán says. “It makes life very uncomfortable for the ordinary citizen. In any country, this tends to be reflected in an increase in social protest, and that is what they are seeking in order to destabilize the government,” he said....   

Lisandra Fariñas /T       -Truthdig

Cubans Struggle Against a Tightening U.S. Noose