Communist Cuba’s Last Year

Signs that communist Cuba is on its last legs continue to pile up. Today Cuba announced that it is out of aviation fuel, meaning that international airliners who land there can’t refuel anymore.

The Cuban government said international airlines can no longer refuel there due to fuel shortages after U.S. President Donald Trump threatened tariffs on any country that supplies the communist country with oil.

The island nation’s leadership said Sunday that Cuba will run out of aviation fuel from Monday, likely disrupting airlines operating there, according to EFE news agency, citing two sources. The kerosene shortage is expected to persist for the next month, with all of Cuba’s international airports affected.

Tourism was a big source of income for Cuba and now it’s essentially going to zero. Last Friday, Cuba announced a plan to ration its remaining fuel supplies for “essential services.”

Deputy Prime Minister Oscar Perez-Oliva Fraga blamed Washington for the crisis, telling Cuban television the government would “implement a series of decisions, first and foremost to guarantee the vitality of our country and essential services, without giving up on development.”

“Fuel will be used to protect essential services for the population and indispensable economic activities,” he said.

Among the new measures are the reduction of the working week in state-owned companies to four days, from Monday to Thursday; restrictions on fuel sales; a reduction in bus and train services between provinces; and the closure of certain tourist establishments.

The idea that Cuba is only now starting to ration is at odds with reporting over the past several weeks which indicates the supply of gasoline is so low that people are waiting weeks to get permission to fill up. Electricity is also out for the majority of the day in many areas, sometimes only coming on in the middle of the night for a few hours. Rationing now isn’t going to fix this.

Cuba has been reaching out to their friends in Russia but Russia isn’t in a position to help.

“The situation in Cuba is truly critical. We know this. We are in intensive contact with our Cuban friends through diplomatic and other channels. Indeed, let’s say the U.S.’s stranglehold is causing many difficulties for the country,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Monday, according to state news outlet RIA Novosti.

Cuba’s communist government has been around for more than 65 years and has survived a lot of challenges and many predictions that its collapse was imminent, but this time seems different. There is no one coming to help them.

Predictions of the demise of Cuba’s government have been made before, notably after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, which had been Cuba’s main benefactor, only to be proved wrong.

But this time, experts say, the survival of Cuba’s government appears very much in doubt…

The U.S. government “has determined that Cuba must be free before the end of 2026,” said Marcell Felipe, a prominent Cuban exile leader in Miami who chairs the American Museum of the Cuban Diaspora and said he had met with U.S. diplomats. “This is a plan in motion.”…

A U.S. official who was not authorized to speak publicly about the administration’s interactions with Havana said Cuban officials were nervous because they were starting to realize their revolution was coming to an end.

Really, the only thing Cuba has going for it now is the long history of beating the odds. But they aren’t going to beat the odds this time. The whole country is probably a few weeks from a collapse. 

While Cuban households try to keep up with the pace of rationing announced by the government, the streets, workplaces and shops are abuzz with frustration. In a market in Havana’s old town, Ramón, a 78-year-old retired engineer, was clearly furious. “We are still in free fall, without an end in sight. How long, gentlemen?” he wonders while the butcher looks on, his expression serious, while fanning the pork exposed on the counter to scare away the flies.

Ramón (a pseudonym) cannot afford to buy pork at1,500 pesos or $3, once a typical ingredient in Cuban cooking. He ends up buying two huge bones that the butcher sells him for 150 pesos. “What can you do? At least with this I can make a broth to warm me up, with the cold as it is,” he says, taking out the last two 100 peso bills from his wallet. Like Ramón, many pensioners are struggling to make ends meet on their dwindling pensions (about 4,000 pesos or around $7 a month), forcing them to look for other ways to survive. With the latest developments and the authorities asking for more effort and creativity, they are eyeing the future with dread.

They have no oil reserves to keep the power on and without power there is no economy and in some places no water. 

Ada Ferrer, a history professor at Princeton University whose book “Cuba, an American History” won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in history, said it was true that past predictions of the fall of the Cuban government had been wrong. But now there is no benefactor waiting in the wings to save Cuba’s crashing economy like Venezuela did after the fall of the Soviet Union.

“This time,” she said, “feels different.”

The end of communist Cuba is probably closer than anyone realizes.

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