A Cuban and a U.S. flag flutter in Havana as Cubans from all walks of life hunker into survival mode, navigating seemingly interminable blackouts and hovering costs for meals, gasoline, and transport, whereas america threatens a stranglehold on the communist-run nation, Cuba, January 30, 2026.
| Photograph Credit score:
REUTERS/Norlys Perez
After toppling Venezuela’s chief earlier this 12 months, the Trump administration has turned its sights on Cuba. The near-total blockade of the island is now posing the best problem to the federal government because the Cuban missile disaster in 1962.
Cuba is shortly operating out of oil, making a dire political and financial disaster for the island’s 11 million residents.
US President Donald Trump’s embargo has prevented any oil tankers from reaching the island for months. A ship carrying Russian gasoline is now reportedly on the way in which to the island to aim to interrupt the blockade, however the US has seized different ships which have beforehand tried.
The Trump administration has additionally threatened tariffs on any nation that tries to ship Cuba gasoline, placing Latin American leaders in an uncomfortable place. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has known as out the embargo as “very unfair”, however she’s been cautious to not antagonise Trump by placing an emphasis on the Cuban “folks”, not the federal government.
This isn’t the primary time the US has remoted Cuba, or coerced Latin American leaders to participate. Cuba has been underneath a US embargo for the previous 66 years, which has stunted its financial system and brought on widespread human struggling.
The island has all the time discovered a strategy to get by, however can it survive this new spherical of American strain?
Animosity grows in the Fifties
The Cuban Revolution caught america abruptly in 1959. In the course of the Chilly Conflict, the US had supported dictatorships in Latin America, such as Cuba’s Fulgencio Batista, with political, monetary and navy assist, creating widespread anti-US activism throughout the area.
After coming to energy, revolutionary chief Fidel Castro instituted modest reforms to land tenure and infrastructure to assist the impoverished folks. Then-US President Dwight Eisenhower opposed these strikes due to their impression on US business pursuits on the island. This opposition become a US embargo of Cuban sugar imports in 1960.
In response, Castro seemed to the Soviets as an export various. Eisenhower retaliated by refusing to ship oil to Cuba, main Castro to signal an oil take care of the Soviets and finally nationalise American and British refineries. In 1961, Castro declared his adherence to “Marxism-Leninism”.
Castro and Cuba had been massively widespread all through Latin America. When the Cuban navy defeated the CIA-trained power of exiled Cuban fighters on the Bay of Pigs in 1961, Castro was lauded for standing as much as the US, although few knew of the navy and intelligence assist coming from the Soviets.
And when President John F. Kennedy started the marketing campaign to take away Cuba from the Organisation of American States (OAS) in 1961, most Latin American democracies moved to dam it.
To carry these leaders to his aspect, Kennedy used a carrot-and-stick strategy. He proposed an “alliance for progress” to satisfy the “primary wants of the [Latin] American folks for houses, work and land, well being and colleges”. However his authorities additionally handed the International Help Act, which established a complete blockade of the island and prohibited US assist to any nation offering help to Cuba.
The OAS eliminated Cuba as a member the next 12 months and, in 1964, voted to embargo all commerce to Cuba, besides meals and drugs.
Life underneath the embargo
The embargo prevented Cuba from reaching the trendy technological age. As an alternative, it existed in socialist bubble, emphasising the care of its folks over financial improvement.
Nonetheless, Cuba’s Chilly Conflict financial development was corresponding to its neighbours. In 1970, the nominal GDP per capita for Cuba was US$645 (A$900), barely decrease than Mexico and about double the Dominican Republic. By 1990, it was US$2,565 (A$3,600), about 80% of Mexico’s and greater than triple the Dominican Republic’s.
Cuba was not industrialised, however the nation did attain full literacy earlier than another Latin American nation and prolonged well being care to all Cubans. Cuba then exported its lecturers and medical doctors all through Latin America, and past.
Nonetheless, life on the island was nonetheless tough, particularly after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
With no clear alternative for Soviet imports and subsidies, the financial system started to buckle. From 1990 to 1994 (a time identified as the “Particular Interval”), meals manufacturing decreased by 40%, resulting in meals rationing, malnutrition and different well being points.
Protests broke out throughout the island in 1994 and a few 35,000 Cubans fled on boats for Florida.
Cuba and the US after the Chilly Conflict
Nonetheless, the top of the Chilly Conflict introduced newfound sympathy and help from Cuba’s neighbours. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, for instance, offered Cuba with oil in change for Cuban medical doctors.
Then, in 2009, the OAS voted to readmit Cuba and permit for regional commerce and tourism once more.
US President Barack Obama adopted go well with in 2014, saying the US embargo of Cuba had “failed”.
His administration then initiated what would turn out to be identified as the “Cuban thaw”. Then-President Raul Castro visited Washington in 2015 and, the next 12 months, Obama turned the primary US president to go to Cuba since 1928.
Obama didn’t finish the embargo, however he did open the door to US tourism, offering a lifeline for Cuba’s financial system.
Why is Trump punishing the island once more?
Now, Trump is reimposing the Chilly Conflict-era embargo on the island and ramping up the strain on President Miguel Díaz-Canel’s authorities.
The White Home claims Cuba presents an “uncommon and extraordinary risk” to america, saying the island is cooperating with “harmful adversaries” on intelligence actions, chief amongst them Russia and China.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has condemned Trump’s embargo, saying “we don’t settle for something like this”.
If Russian oil makes it to Cuba, extra assist may observe. If that eventuates, the US can have invited Russia into its yard once more, laying the muse for an additional Chilly Conflict-style stalemate, with the Cuban folks as soon as extra trapped in the center.
Revealed on February 24, 2026
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