Food queues and blackouts as US tightens Cuba blockade

Current president Miguel Diaz Canel

Donald Trump wants “regime change” in Cuba—and he is ­willing for people to die of hunger and disease for it.

Trump’s US administration declared Cuba an “unusual and extraordinary threat” on 29 January as part of its renewed push to dominate Latin America. It has tightened the US blockade to choke off the Caribbean island’s oil supplies to bring the Cuban regime to heel.

Queues for petrol stretch for miles and food is becoming scarce. The lights are out regularly as oil‑fired power stations are left too idle to preserve what remains of fuel supplies.

Planes don’t have enough fuel to land anywhere. Tourism has plummeted as hotels shut. The University of Havana has closed its doors and public transport in the capital has been out of action for several days.

US imperialism is chiefly to blame for the humanitarian crisis in Cuba. Vital imports of oil to power Cuba have all but stopped after Trump’s intervention in Venezuela last month wiped out its most reliable trade ally.

And the capture of Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro has warded off other Latin American states from helping Cuba.

Trump has built up US Naval forces in the Caribbean which have also targeted Russian tankers.

Even the often defiant president of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum, has had to bow down to Trump’s orders. Mexico sent two ships with a limited supply of aid, foodstuff and oil to Cuba, not enough to break the siege.

The US imposed the blockade shortly after Fidel Castro’s guerilla fighters overthrew its ally, the brutal dictator Fulgencio Batista, in 1959.

The nationalist revolution was a blow to imperialism, which had turned Cuba into a playground for the rich and held back economic development.

In 1961, Castro retrospectively declared that the revolution was “socialist” and aligned Cuba with the Soviet Union. He adopted its state capitalism model, where the ruling bureaucracy presided over the economy as if it were one giant capitalist firm in competition with the West.

The Castro regime had the support of large numbers of working class and poor Cubans. It held out against US imperialism, backed national liberation struggles in the Global South and improved health and education in the early years after the revolution.

Today, there is little support for the Cuban regime as people just seek survive. The heroism sustained by the Castro family has faded. Fidel Castro is gone while his brother and successor, Raul, resigned as president in 2018.

Current president Miguel Diaz Canel has done little but impose austerity while the state capitalist bureaucrats remain in their Havana mansions.

As Cuban socialist Frank Hernandez says, “The government has built up the image of being a gang of useless slogan repeaters, incapable of solving problems as basic as guaranteeing food.”

The Cuban state has privatised large parts of the economy, leading to large increases in prices. Last year, an increase of up to 800 percent in mobile phone rates led to protests at the University of Havana.

As hospitals and houses crumble, the regime threw millions of dollars at the construction of luxury hotels for tourists. Even before Trump’s offensive, daily energy blackouts had become the norm.

It is unclear what fate Cuba faces at this stage, with the regime being called to negotiate with Trump.

Unlike Venezuela, Cuba lacks a viable alternative leader from within the regime. And figures in the Trump administration fear a collapse of the regime would lead to immigration to the US.

Socialists must call for the defeat of US imperialism and demand the immediate lifting of sanctions. A victory for Trump would only strengthen the superrich, corporations and far right across Latin America.

It would also serve to shore up Trump’s imperialist control over the Caribbean as a strategic region for global capitalism in the face of its rival China.

But that doesn’t mean holding up Cuba as a model of socialism. Large scale protests like the 11J movement of 2021 show how Cubans can revolt from below. Hope lies with working class Cubans fighting for their own interests.