Organização Comunista Internacionalista (Esquerda Marxista) Corrente Marxista Internacional
Cuba is facing its worst economic moment since the triumph of the 1959 revolution. Since his first term, Trump has steadily tightened the economic siege on the country, making the infamous international blockade increasingly severe. Today the island faces widespread shortages of oil, the foundation of its energy system, as well as basic food and healthcare items. The country now stands on the brink of a serious humanitarian crisis.
During the Obama administration, U.S. imperialism shifted its line toward Cuba. After decades of trying to strangle the Cuban economy without bringing down the regime created by the revolution, Washington in 2015 opted for diplomatic rapprochement. The aim was to reintegrate Cuba into the world market, facilitate the entry of foreign capital, and open more political space for the counterrevolutionary opposition. The ruling bureaucracy, then headed by Raúl Castro, adapted readily to this policy. It already wanted to implement economic openings in the style of “market socialism,” and since then a new bourgeoisie has gradually gained strength in the country.
But the current crisis of U.S. capitalism does not allow for long-term strategies, and big capital demands new spaces for investment as quickly as possible. For this reason Trump returned to the policy of economic strangulation, and Biden did not reverse it. Now Trump is intensifying the pressure on Cuba even further, seeking to accelerate a counterrevolutionary overthrow of the regime and rapidly open the island to imperialist capital. On March 5 he declared that he first wants to deal with Iran and that Cuba will come next, calling it merely a “matter of time.”
Since the kidnapping of Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela has been barred by the United States from exporting oil to Cuba. Venezuela had been the island’s main source of fuel, although exports had already been significantly reduced since Maduro took power and ended the subsidized oil agreements that existed under Chávez. Even so, Venezuela had still been supplying roughly half of the more than 100,000 barrels per day that Cuba requires. Without oil, Cuba cannot keep its electrical grid and transportation systems running. The shortage of this resource has therefore been causing severe problems for both the economy and the population for years.
To make matters worse, in addition to blocking Venezuelan imports, Trump threatened to impose tariffs on any other countries that sell oil to Cuba. As a result, the Mexican government under Claudia Sheinbaum suspended shipments that had already been scheduled. Mexico had been the second-largest supplier of oil to Cuba, delivering about 22,000 barrels per day, a figure that had already been reduced to around 7,000 in 2025.
By mid-February the Cuban government announced that no oil shipments had reached the island since the beginning of 2026 and that reserves would not last much longer. Blackouts, which until the beginning of the year had been longer and more frequent in provincial cities, are now widespread and can last up to 15 or even 20 hours. In the capital, which the regime has tried to protect more carefully in order to avoid mass unrest, outages have been lasting 10 hours or more.
Russia, which is already under numerous economic sanctions from the United States and the European Union, has promised assistance to the island. At the end of February, reports suggested that an oil tanker allegedly belonging to Russia’s so-called “shadow fleet” was transporting diesel to Cuba, although this has not been confirmed. Even if it is true, Russian aid alone will not be enough to fully restore Cuba’s electrical system. On March 4, two thirds of the island lost power due to the failure of thermoelectric plants, and it took more than 60 hours for power to return to some regions.
Since 2021, popular demonstrations have periodically erupted across different parts of Cuba due to constant blackouts and the growing shortage of basic goods. Trump’s calculation is clear: provoke an economic collapse, thereby turning sectors of the population against the government, allowing counterrevolutionary forces to take power or at least forcing sectors of the bureaucracy to fully commit to U.S. policy. A similar process is currently unfolding in Venezuela with figures such as Delcy Rodríguez and Jorge Gómez.
On February 25, a speedboat from Florida was intercepted by the Cuban navy, leading to an exchange of gunfire with its occupants, all Cuban residents of the United States. According to an official government statement, the ten crew members were heavily armed with rifles, pistols, and tactical equipment, and four were killed in the confrontation. It is not yet clear whether this was an isolated action by counterrevolutionaries or a plan coordinated with the CIA. Anyway, there is good reason to consider the last possibility. In 1961 something very similar took place during the failed invasion at the Bay of Pigs. At that time, the plan was for the guerrilla force to land on the island, link up with counterrevolutionary opposition sectors, and overthrow Fidel Castro’s government. Just one day earlier, Castro had proclaimed the “socialist turn” of the Cuban Revolution.
Defending Cuba from the actions of U.S. imperialism is a duty not only for revolutionary socialists but for anyone with even minimal progressive convictions. Today Cuba is Washington’s primary target in Latin America. Tomorrow it could be any other country. After the kidnapping of Maduro, the Venezuelan government was brought to its knees and handed over its natural wealth to U.S. corporations. This is precisely what imperialism now seeks to do in Cuba, as well as in Iran and in many other places that have been brutally attacked through economic or even military actions by imperialism. The working class must mobilize against the blockade of Cuba, demanding that working class organizations and parties organize mass demonstrations and strikes capable of disrupting the operations of U.S. multinational corporations. In this struggle, the role of the U.S. working class itself is crucial.
In Brazil, it is outrageous that the Lula government, which claims to stand with the working class and presents itself as a supporter of national sovereignty, remains silent about the strangling of Cuba by the United States. If it were minimally committed to sovereignty and to opposing imperialist aggression, the Lula government would confront the threat of sanctions and export oil to assist the Cuban population. The truth is that Lula’s real commitment is to big capital, which is why he will not risk sanctions against Petrobras or new tariffs on Brazilian exports to the United States. For this reason, solidarity actions with Cuba must not only denounce U.S. imperialism but also the Lula government itself, which declares solidarity with the Cuban people while refusing to send oil to the island.
It’s also remarkable that the situation exposes the deep hypocrisy of the Chinese government. Although it claims to be socialist and inspires sectors of radicalized youth searching for an alternative to capitalist barbarism, the Chinese government has done absolutely nothing to assist Cuba. Statements of condemnation will not keep Cuban hospitals and homes functioning. Exposing this reality is essential in order to break the illusions that have been growing around the Chinese government.
Imperialism and the blockade are not the only problem: the Cuban bureaucracy fuels the counterrevolution too
Finally, it is necessary to address the damaging role of the Cuban state bureaucracy. Actively expressing solidarity with the Cuban population against the blockade should not and cannot prevent us from making the necessary criticisms. This bureaucracy has been creating increasingly fertile conditions for an internal counterrevolution. To understand this process, it is important to revisit the origins of the revolution and the characteristics of the political regime that emerged from it.
The Cuban Revolution led to the expropriation of the native bourgeoisie and of imperialist capital. With resources previously belonging to a small minority of exploiters, it was possible to guarantee employment, housing, healthcare, and education for the entire working class. Shortly after the revolution, Cuba became a global reference in the fight against illiteracy, and its healthcare system remains an example to the world even today, despite the immense difficulties created by the blockade. This demonstrates the enormous potential of a revolution that socializes the means of production. Without a bourgeoisie appropriating wealth in the form of profit, the working class can achieve extraordinary advances in its quality of life.
The Cuban working class played a central role in both the success and the radicalization of the revolution. It was a general strike that ensured the Rebel Army’s advance into the capital and prevented the bourgeoisie and imperialism from imposing a continuity government after the flight of the dictator Fulgencio Batista. In the preceding years, numerous strikes and regional general strikes had already eroded the foundations of the Batista dictatorship.
Yet the Cuban proletariat did not stop there. Between 1959 and 1961 it organized numerous strikes, demonstrations, and workplace occupations demanding higher wages, shorter working hours, and the reinstatement of workers fired for political reasons during the dictatorship. In many cases workers also demanded the nationalization of companies belonging to Batista collaborators or to saboteurs of the new revolutionary government.¹
When the counterrevolution knocked at the door, the July 26 Movement relied on these actions to confront the bourgeoisie and imperialism. Only then did the leadership proclaim the “socialist turn,” since its original program had been limited to restoring the 1940 Constitution and establishing a democratic and sovereign republic committed to social justice.
However, the Castroist bureaucracy of the July 26 Movement repressed the most radical sectors of the Cuban Revolution, including the Trotskyist Revolutionary Workers Party and even radical tendencies within the movement itself. It also prevented the emergence and development of workers’ self management bodies. This imposed a bureaucratic deformation on the revolution, establishing the political monopoly of a state party bureaucracy. Although elections exist in Cuba, the Cuban Communist Party is the only legal party, and it has the authority to filter candidate lists, ensuring that parliament is always composed of individuals aligned with its directives. This is the classic model of Stalinist regimes.
However, socialized property cannot be properly managed from above without the active participation of the proletariat. Proletarian democracy is not a mere decorative element in the construction of socialism. Without it, administration cannot function effectively because the bureaucracy will inevitably rely on rough estimates of production capacity and social demand. This severe bureaucratic deformation was compounded by the national isolation imposed by the U.S. blockade and by the abandonment of revolutionary internationalism adopted by the Cuban regime in the early years of the revolution. The blockade and bureaucratic deformation are therefore the two principal sources of the difficulties faced by Cuban society.
National isolation was partially mitigated during the 1970s through Soviet aid. However, with the counterrevolution that destroyed the Soviet Union in 1991, Cuba experienced a profound crisis throughout the 1990s known as the “Special Period.” Sections of the governing bureaucracy concluded that “market socialism” was the solution for revitalizing the economy.
This meant opening limited space for private property and market relations, generating revenue for the state through taxation but also producing growing social inequality for the working class.
During the 1990s Raúl Castro oversaw limited experiments in “market socialism” through companies linked to the armed forces. The process accelerated with the opening to international tourism, which involved the entry of private capital into the luxury resort sector. When Raúl Castro served as president from 2008 to 2018, these experiments deepened. Yet the situation changed more fundamentally when his protégé Miguel Díaz Canel assumed the presidency.
In 2019 Díaz Canel coordinated the approval of a new constitution for Cuba, and in 2021 he launched the economic reform package known as Tarea Ordenamiento. In short, private property and the exploitation of labor were legalized, state incentives were created for the formation of capitalist enterprises, and incentives for foreign investment were expanded. Privatizations were also carried out.
As a result, a new bourgeoisie has developed, especially in the tourist restaurant sector and in retail. The initial capital for this emerging bourgeoisie came from the legalization of real estate and automobile sales, wealth accumulated by bureaucrats through corruption, and black market operators. With this capital and the facilities created by the regime, this bourgeoisie began expanding its businesses, with thousands of private companies established in recent years.
To transfer resources to this new bourgeoisie, the government launched a broad offensive against state subsidies to the population. Official agencies began criticizing “egalitarianism,” claiming it supposedly generated “laziness” and a “lack of initiative.” After successive cuts in subsidies, the famous libreta system was abolished in February of this year. Through this ration book system, Cuban families had long been able to obtain basic food items at almost symbolic prices, although prices had already been rising and the number of subsidized goods had been steadily reduced.
Food previously subsidized for the population began to be supplied instead to wholesale markets serving new private restaurants. Similar processes occurred with other goods as well. The state began importing fewer and fewer products while expanding authorization for private markets to import them. This has generated growing inflation, also fueled by the obstacles created by the blockade. The result has been increasing scarcity for the population, aggravated by the fact that the state drastically reduced investment in agriculture to only 2.3 percent in 2025, concentrating resources on tourism instead.²
All of this has naturally produced popular dissatisfaction. In July 2021 spontaneous demonstrations erupted against constant blackouts and the growing scarcity of basic goods. In September 2022 these protests became longer and more frequent. Counterrevolutionary sectors have attempted to exploit the situation, but so far they remain limited largely to liberal intellectual circles, unable to organize mass mobilizations of their own.³
At the same time, no revolutionary organization in Cuba is currently capable of channeling this dissatisfaction with the bureaucratic regime and giving it a progressive direction. Such a direction would involve replacing the current regime with a democratic proletarian self government committed to world revolution, similar to the Bolshevik government in the early years after the Soviet Revolution.