On June 3, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel was interviewed by Spanish journalist Andrés Gil of el Diario. Díaz-Canel was asked at the outset about the petroleum blockade and the current situation in Cuba, and what the Cuban government can do. He responded that the U.S. blockade of more than sixty years is criminal and brutal, and something that the Cuban people do not deserve. The blockade became more intense during the second half of 2019, acquiring a different quality. And the intensification of the blockade has been accompanied by a cynical construction of a narrative that calls Cuba a failed State, a narrative that seeks to make invisible those who are truly responsible for the consequences of the blockade, namely, those who have launched policies of maximum pressure.
For six decades, Díaz-Canel said, Cuba had possibilities for surviving and advancing during the blockade, but the imposition of 240 measures during the first Trump administration made possible a financial and petroleum persecution, and the inclusion of Cuba on a list of countries that supposedly support terrorism cut all possibilities for access to credit and made difficult relations with banks and international financial agencies. These measures were maintained by the Biden administration and were re-emitted by the second Trump administration. Trump’s January 29 Executive order declared an energy blockade, and a subsequent Order on May 1 internationalized the blockade with the concept of secondary sanctions, which are applied not only against U.S. citizens and companies but against citizens and companies of any country in the world which have a relation with Cuba.
The goal of the sanctions is to asphyxiate the Cuban economy and to produce a social eruption in Cuba, thus establishing a pretext for intervention, Díaz-Canel maintained.
The effects of the intensification of the blockade and the petroleum blockade
The effects of the policy are found in all sectors of life, Díaz-Canel stressed. As a result of the petroleum blockade, only one tanker, from Russia, has arrived in the last five months. Cuba has opened the commerce in foreign petroleum, such that fuel can now be imported through the private sector. But in these last five months, the private sector has been able to import only 27,000 tons of fuel, consisting of 6,000 tons of gasoline and 21,000 tons of diesel. But that quantity of gasoline supplies less than half of what is needed in a month, and the diesel is used up in only a week of electricity generation.
The effects of the policy are found in the production of food, Díaz-Canel explained. There are no fertilizers, insecticide, or agricultural supplies. There is no fuel for agricultural machinery or medicine for animals. And there are difficulties in the transportation of food to the population.
In the area of health, Cuba has a strong system of health which has demonstrated its capacities. But today, Cuban hospitals do not have the energy they need. There is a waiting list for surgeries of more than 100,000 patients, including 12,000 children. And all this is affecting Cuban health indicators. Cuba has had an infant mortality rate that competes with the most developed countries; but today the rate has risen from 3.6 to more than 9. Cuba still has an infant mortality rate that is relatively high by world standards, but it is not what Cubans have been accustomed to. In addition, because of the shortage of fuel, Cuba has not been able to distribute much of the medicine that its has manufactured to the pharmacies and hospitals.
Cuba has workers available who have not been able to produce because of the lack of raw materials. The State pays them compensation, even though they are not producing.
There has been a reduction in tourism, which is one of the country’s principal sources of income. International tourist agencies have been pressured by the United States, and many agencies are withdrawing from Cuba, against their will. International hotel chains also have been pressured to leave Cuba.
The limitations on production result in a shortage of supply in the domestic market, provoking inflation. The purchasing power of Cuban salaries has been reduced, which generates a certain level of frustration and fatigue among the people, Díaz-Canel noted.
Cuba responds
In response, Díaz-Canel explained, Cuba has developed a plan that stresses an increase in national production; an increase in food production; the decentralization of production; and the transformation of energy generation. The plan has been approved by the National Assembly of People’s Power, following an extensive popular debate, including the participation of experts. The plan stresses the utilization of science and innovation.
The strategy of national food production and food sovereignty includes agroecological techniques, and it depends more on the use of animal traction. The strategy includes an increase of economic incentives for cultivating previously unused land, such that today more land is being cultivated, reaching its highest level in fifteen years.
Díaz-Canel elaborated on the strategy of the decentralization of production in a press conference on June 12. The municipalities now have the faculty to decide what the economic actors are and to define the relations among them, taking advantage of endogenous forces in each municipality. The municipalities now are able to manage direct foreign investment. Municipal enterprises can import and export without intermediaries. Each enterprise is able to design its salary system, based on the income generated by the sale of goods or services.
The plan for the transformation of energy production has included the installation of photovoltaic parks and other sources of renewable energy, including biomass and biogas, Díaz-Canel noted in the June 3 interview. In 2025, Cuba increased the renewable sources of energy from 3 to 10%, which are generating nearly 50% of electricity consumed during daylight hours.
The plan for energy transformation includes increasing the use of national crude, which is a heavy oil. Cuba is applying science and innovation to increase the production of national crude and to expand its use in the economy, adapting productive processes to the high level of Sulphur found in Cuban crude.
As international hotel chains depart Cuba, Díaz-Canel noted, the country is turning to direct Cuban State administration of hotels, as against joint Cuban-foreign administration. Cuba also is planning for investment by Cubans in the administration of hotels and by foreign entities that do not have bank accounts or any dependency on the United States, departing from the modality of cooperation with large international hotel chains. At the same time, the Cuban President declared his belief that Cuba is going to overcome the uncertainty created by the coercive sanctions, and that many tourism and hotel investors are going to return to Cuba and continue doing business in Cuba.
In my view, when the “friends of Cuba” disseminate information concerning the hardships being caused by the intensification of the blockade since 2019 and the petroleum blockade of 2026, they frequently understate the efforts being made in Cuba to respond to the situation, and thus they are giving the impression that if the enemies of the Revolution continue to exercise maximum pressure, the Revolution will fall. True friends know one another, and the “friends of Cuba” ought to know of the Cuban capacity to resist and endure.
Cuba today is constructing responses to the current situation, which bit by bit will ameliorate the situation. The people are prepared to sacrifice, and they will continue to participate in the process of resistance, even if the economic recovery never arrives to its former level. Therefore, continuing pressure will not bring about a social eruption; it will only reduce the living conditions of the people. The intensification of the blockade cannot work; it constitutes a pointless attack on the people of Cuba.
How does Díaz-Canel respond to the possibility of a U.S. invasion?
In response to Gil’s question concerning the possibility of an attack of Cuba by the United States, Díaz-Canel declared:
Cuba is a country of peace. Cuba is a country that wants peace. Cuba wants to improve its society with popular participation, defending the principles in which we believe, the convictions we have.
There are many examples showing that we are a country of peace. Cuba has never attacked anyone. The representatives of the U.S. government lie when they say that Cuba is a threat to the national security of the United States. Can ten million inhabitants on a blockaded, harassed island be a danger, an extraordinary and unusual national security threat, as they have said, to the most powerful nation in the world? That is a pretext built to warm up world public opinion to justify the possibility of a military aggression against Cuba.
Threats against Cuba, the Cuban President continued, are made every day. However, “we do not want war. We want dialogue. We want to move away from confrontation. But we are not afraid of war, and we are preparing for military aggression.” Cuba conducts weekly military exercises in preparation for a possible invasion, in accordance with the Cuban military doctrine of the War of All the People, which involves the participation of the entire population. Cuba hopes that these preparations will dissuade, because invading Cuba would cost hundreds of thousands of Cuban lives, and it would be very costly in human lives to the invaders. And it would threaten the security and stability of Latin America and the Caribbean.
Cuba maintains, Díaz-Canel asserted, its historic position in support of dialogue with the United States, seeking commercial relations and cultural, academic, sport, and scientific interchanges, in spite of ideological differences. In the current conversations with the United States, Cuba is proposing areas of cooperation that would be of benefit to both peoples. The conversations must be a dialogue without pressure and without any conditions that affect Cuban independence, sovereignty, and self-determination. There cannot be any imposing of change with respect to the Cuban political-economic system. The internal affairs of Cuba are not at stake in any negotiation.
Cuba is disposed, he added, to many areas of cooperation with the United States, including U.S. investments and businesses in Cuba. Current restrictions in this area are not imposed by Cuba; they are imposed by the laws and policies of the U.S. blockade.
The intensification of the long-standing blockade against Cuba since 2019 does not have the support of the majority of the people of the United States, where it is widely believed that Cuba’s problems are not of vital concern to the United States. And where there is a certain degree of respect for the small island nation for its audacity. But on the other hand, the opposition to the U.S. Cuba policy in the United States is not intense, because the policy is not perceived as having adverse economic consequences for the USA.
The “activist” opposition to the U.S. policy with respect to Cuba is superficial. It does not understand Cuba’s system of people’s democracy, and it therefore cannot effectively debunk the U.S. blockade by making it evident that Cuba has an advanced form of democracy, more advanced than representative democracy. There needs to be self-critical reflection in the U.S. Left, reflecting on the possibility that its own limitations are an important factor in the continuation of the criminal blockade for decades.
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