By Henry Srebrnik, Saint John Telegraph-Journal
On New Years Day of 1959, Fidel Castro’s 26th of July Movement swept into Havana and unseated the corrupt Fulgencio Batista. The announcement interrupted a bowl game on television. That was 67 years ago.
The Cuban revolution animated the North American left, even before the disaster that was the Vietnam War turned it into a mass movement. The left-wing and influential sociologist C. Wright Mills visited the island and published Listen, Yankee: The Revolution in Cuba a year later. And Che Guevara’s picture on a poster became arguably the most famous piece of pop art in the world.
I visited Cuba in 1975 – before the era of mass tourism. The fires of revolutionary fervour were still present. I also wrote an MA thesis on Cuban-American relations. But that was then, this is now.
The island of 9.6 million inhabitants, under an American economic embargo since 1962, has been mired in a severe economic crisis for six years. But recently, things got much worse, following President Nicolas Maduro’s removal from power in Venezuela Jan. 3. It has been Cuba’s primary source of oil. “Cuba looks like it is ready to fall,” U.S. President Donald Trump told reporters on Air Force One.
On Jan. 29, Trump signed an executive order that would levy tariffs on any country “that directly or indirectly sells or otherwise provides any oil to Cuba.” Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel accused the U.S. of “fascist state terrorism” and “imperialist barbarism.” But rumours that the Cuban government is talking with the Trump administration about ending one-party rule persist.
Maduro had helped prop up the communist government with Venezuela’s vast oil reserves, sending the country about 25,000 barrels of oil per day in 2023 and 10,000 in 2024 and 2025. Despite the ongoing Cuban energy crisis, much of the oil provided to Cuba by Maduro was resold by Havana to acquire desperately needed cash for other uses.
Cuba’s other major supplier, Mexico, also ended its provision of oil to the island. Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum denied that the decision was made as a result of American pressure, but everyone knows better. She needs to stay on Trump’s good graces as negotiations on a new USMCA free trade deal ramp up.
The issue of oil shipments to Cuba is a fraught one for Sheinbaum, who is striving to show the Trump administration that Mexico is a partner on trade and security without alienating the left wing of her party, Morena. So Cuba will be reduced to relying on shipments from Russia, which is expected to supply Cuba with oil as part of a “humanitarian” effort. Cuba’s own heavy oil can only cover about 40 per cent of the country’s overall energy consumption. But it’s ill-suited for most fuels, so it's mainly used for power generation.
To deal with fuel shortages, the government Feb. 9 announced that international airlines can no longer refuel there. Gas can only be bought with foreign currency at dollar-only gas stations. The fuel shortage will also affect train travel. Domestic routes will operate every eight days per destination.
Ending Communist domination on the island has long been a goal of Secretary of State Marco Rubio, himself of Cuban extraction, and the prospect of forcing out the remnants of the Castro regime was reportedly one of the motives for the U.S. raid on Venezuela. Rubio told the Cuban government that it “should be concerned.”
In 1962, the United States imposed a full trade embargo on Cuba, following Deputy Assistant Secretary Lester Mallory’s recommendation three years earlier to deny “money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation, and overthrow of the government.”
In 1996, Congress hardened the embargo by passing the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity (LIBERTAD) Act, known as Helms-Buron, which extended the ban beyond U.S. borders. It explicitly sought to expedite the collapse of the Cuban government by discouraging foreign business investment.
Eyeing possible regime change in Cuba, American corporations now see an opportunity to recoup assets lost in revolutionary seizures many decades ago. In 1960, Castro authorized Law 851, allowing the Cuban government to expropriate U.S.-owned or controlled property.
The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear lawsuits that could help corporate interests recoup hundreds of millions of dollars in long-expropriated Cuban assets if the United States seizes control of the nation.
The Court will hear arguments for Exxon Mobil Corp. v. Corporación Cimex, S.A. and Havana Docks Corporation v. Royal Caribbean Cruises, Ltd. on Feb. 23. If the Supreme Court rules in favor of the corporate plaintiffs, it could create new avenues for private actors to capitalize on regime change.
Canadian tourists have been a mainstay of the Cuban economy, but even that is now threatened. The federal government raised its advisory level Feb. 4 for travel to Cuba, warning Canadians that worsening shortages could also affect resorts. And three Canadian airlines have suspended flights to the island.
Princeton University history professor Ada Ferrer, whose book Cuba, an American History won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in history, told the New York Times that past predictions of the fall of the Cuban government had been wrong. But now there’s no benefactor waiting in the wings to save Cuba’s crashing economy. It’s come to this. Quite sad.
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