The Fuel Shortages in Cuba are Worse Than You Think

[Judi Lynn]

JUNE 16, 2023

BY ELI SMITH - KAITLIN BLANCHARD



Photograph Source: Mike_fleming – CC BY 2.0

One hundred and fifty young people from the United States and Canada arrived in Cuba in late April 2023, just days before International Workers Day. As members of CODEPINK’s youth cohort, our goal was to understand the Cuban political system, the US blockade and its impacts on everyday life. We sat in a room upon our arrival, listening to our trip hosts explain the issue of fuel shortages on the island. Before they were done talking, the microphones went silent. The power had gone out. The rest of the presentation sounded like faint whispers to the delegates sitting in the back of the room. We tried our best to hear, trying to silence all the background noise to no avail. Thinking of it now, there was no better way to understand how dire the situation was than to see it for ourselves.

In 1960, following the Cuban Revolution that propelled Fidel Castro to power, a memorandum from the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs to the Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs was written and later declassified. It stated that a majority of Cubans supported Fidel, and if the US wanted to counter the rise of communism in its backyard, it would have to deny “money and supplies to Cuba, decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation, and an overthrow of the government.”

The US imposed a blockade which still restricts necessary items from entering Cuba and prevents other countries from selling them to the island. On top of the embargo, the Biden Administration keeps Cuba on a state-sponsor of terrorism list, further restricting economic development. The goal of these policies are explicit in the 1960 memorandum: the US is trying to starve socialism out of Cuba. The purpose of the US policy towards Cuba is to create misery, and it’s proudly displayed on the State Department website.

And we certainly saw misery with our own eyes. Usually for May Day, millions of Cubans rally in Havana, celebrating socialism and workers. May Day was scaled down this year due to fuel shortages – Cuba has to conserve the fuel it has for farming and other necessities. US media certainly reported on it, but without any mention that it was the US government that was causing shortages of all kinds in Cuba.

Leading up to May Day, a massive storm swept through the island, causing emergencies that the Cuban government couldn’t effectively deal with because of the lack of fuel. We sat through multiple power outages, even in a hotel that had decent fuel access. We toured neighborhoods in transformation, learning how Cubans were developing their own communities to have better access to medical care, food and other life affirming services. Even those tours, full of hope and self determination, were plagued by outages. Tourism is a huge industry that helps sustain the Cuban economy, so tourists like us are usually shielded from occurrences like this. We had no way of truly grasping the day to day effects that these power shortages were having on Cubans outside of Havana.

More:
https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/06/16/the-fuel-shortages-in-cuba-are-worse-than-you-think/

[Marcus IM]

1. Most of the cars in Cuba are not old 50's US cars. Most are modern French and Asian hi-economy cars.

I get the nostalgia, but it is a complete misrepresentation of actual car usage in Cuba.

Starving Cubans into submission so the US can "liberate" them. Pure f#ckery.

[Judi Lynn]

2. I've noticed almost every photographer who publishes in US-directed media does the same thing.

They seem to think those cars are Cuba's national emblem, like the US bald eagle.