The Fuel Crisis in Cuba Worsens

Fuel is for sale at the Vista al Mar service center in El Vedado, but only diesel.  Photo: 14ymedio

By Juan Diego Rodriguez (14ymedio)

HAVANA TIMES – Havana seems to have returned to the worst days of the fuel crisis. Piled up and bored, since the beginning of the week the drivers wait daily for hours in line and often don’t manage to buy. On a tour by 14ymedio through several gas stations in the city, even those that charge in dollars, usually empty, had lines this Thursday.

“It’s not just today. Yesterday I went to all the service centers of El Vedado, Guanabacoa and Miramar and only found gasoline on the Puente de Hierro, near the bay tunnel,” Yoel, driver of a private Moskvitch, tells this newspaper. “Even at Infanta and San Rafael, where I always buy, there wasn’t a drop,” he says. Finding a place with fuel, as expected, is not enough: “When I got to the gas station I had 300 cars in front of me.” He left without buying.

This Thursday, Yoel took to the streets again in search of gasoline. This time the tour took him through the municipality of Plaza de la Revolución, where “not a single service center had anything.” Finally, at the Tángana, in El Vedado, the driver joined a line no less long than the previous day’s line to refuel.

“They told me that here and the 25 and G service center are the only places where they are selling gasoline, but I don’t want to risk going there and find the same number of people or more than here. It’s better to wait, and if I don’t make it today either then I’ll have to try again,” he sighs, resigned.

Cars have been in line at the Tángana in El Vedado since early morning / 14ymedio

To top it off, he says, several drivers in the line have told him that the cards to buy fuel are failing, which delays the line and makes the drivers more nervous. “Those who don’t even have Fincimex cards have to look for where to recharge, because that’s the only one that’s working now. With the others the connection fails,” he explains.

The lack of fuel is also noticeable in state transport, says Yoel. “Today I haven’t seen a state bus pass by all day,” he says.

“That station is for the privileged who can pay in dollars,” Yoel complains. “The rest, we have to endure here under rain, sun and clouds.”

A few blocks from Tángana is the Vista al Mar gas station, which has been selling fuel exclusively in dollars since last June. The place was the last in the capital to be transformed into a service center collecting “hard currency,” and, although some cars are clumped together in line – mainly almendrones – the short line is far from those that have formed in front of the neighboring premises – one to refuel and another to fill jerricans – that already go around the block.

“This service is for the privileged who can pay in dollars,” complains Yoel. “The rest of us have to endure it here in rain, sun and calm.”

Translated by Regina Anavy for Translating Cuba.

Read more from Cuba here on Havana Times.

17 thoughts on “The Fuel Crisis in Cuba Worsens

  • Sure there’s is mismanagement in Cuba and the population is suffering, lifting the ambargo would improve the cuban economy,but be ready to take impose lectures from uncle Sam, iMF,worl Bank ,just like the
    Idiots in Haiti Government, I think China is good allie that can help Cuba improve its infrastructures, technology assistances and so on for the Cubans, US ambargo may last until Washington can fabricate some fraudulent elections on the name of ” democracy” just like Haiti and then come drugs, gang violence, instability, corruption with USAid organizations with BS
    Programs, all kinds religious groups to serve you Jesus to further déstabilise you with Santeria culture.Cubans will lose their identity.

  • So Juan Delgado’s many assertions about it socialism and capialism and the rest are to be even taken seriously, where are your evidence for your assertions?

    That said why haven’t you preeented even a tangentially decent critique of your apparent love affair with capitalism since according to your twisted notion of every other social systems, they are apparent failures?

    Sincerely,

    Your Dissident

  • What RUBBISH to utter? The Cuban people “ deserve” what they are experience because they had the dignity to overthrow the puppet regime of the disgusting criminal regime of Fulfencio Batista and create the first revolution against US imperialism! What nonsense?

    This according to this pro-imperial logic, they should have stayed under the yoke of Batista and the Yankees to achieve their freedom.

    Where is your capacity to think? Cuba is being punished for its revolution. Plain and simple!

    Does that mean that working and poor people should embrace their oppressors?

  • So much ignorance from so much misinformed eked people. For example, to say that the US Blockade has no impact on Cuba’s economic and social woes is blissful ignorance of those who make that baseless argument. In other words for those ignorant persons, the problem is inherently socialism. Thus, if there was no blockade, socialism in Cuba would still have starving folks, fuel shortage, the inability to purchase foods from international markets, to purchase the inputs to produce foods etc.

    Hence, if the problem was inherently the result of socialism, why is it that the former socialist countries in Europe and Asia etc did not have starving people, millions fleeting for hunger, fuel crisis etc?

    What intellectual and political idiocy? Is the US a socialist country? Are all the countries in Latin America socialist or capitalist? Why is there hunger and prostitution and widespread poverty in those nations?

    Wake up and live people!!

    Idiocy is idiocy no matter who utters it!!

  • It seems to me that some on the right confalt socialism with communism. Most of Europe, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and Canada have social welfare states. That is type of socialism that was brought in by the power of the workers and their unions. These places have a higher level of national happiness than here in the USA. People have opportunity to rise via meritocracy created by having all schools funded by the federal government not school districts using property taxes to pay the costs. Here that means in low income areas with low property values there are less dollars per student than in a higher socio-economic area. College in most of these places is either very cheap as it once was here or free. I can attest to my own education K-BS in Business. I was on my own at 18. All dictatorships from left to right have faulty economies. Command economies just doesn’t work. Spain and Portugal were very poor under the fascist dictatorships of Franco and Salazar. Now they are pretty well off compared to most developed nations. The eastern Bloc has in 30+ years gone from poor to pretty well off. Poland has a higher GNP per capita than Portugal. The Russians had been sucking their blood for decades to finance itself. Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela are examples of failed “socialism” in the western hemisphere. The first and last were well off for Latin America at the time the dictators took over. They ran their economies into the ground. There is some pretense of “the people” and lip service to leftist causes but in reality the new elite is only interested in itself and they know nothing of economics. Running a country is much like running a big company, it takes managerial skill. In a dictatorship those put in charge of the economy are loyalists that won’t do or say anything that the elite may not like. So these places just get poorer and the infrastructure (roads, buildings, bridges, industry) falls apart.
    As for much of Latin American it is endemic corruption that keeps them down. It is true that any organism can’t thrive with too many parasites. Corrupt officials and those that benefit from their rule are the parasites. Rigged bidding, sweetheart contracts, nepotism, racism (in Cuba too) and so on prevent the economy from thriving for the good of all, not just those who are at the top and benefit. Think Mexico. It should be rich as it has abundant natural resources of all sorts and plenty of available labor and capital. It isn’t as those at the top don’t want those lower down to benefit by obtaining higher wages. This is the class system inherited from colonial times (Las Castas) that prevents progress. I’ve been asked by various rich Mexicans if I was really white or just looked white (a “pass). I was appalled at the question and was without words. They then assumed I was a pass, someone of lower status in their minds. Jobs ads for professional and clerical work as well say white only but in very polite terms such as “must be of good appearance”. I read that and thought do they want to sexually harass an attorney or administrative assistant??? Friends there had to explain it to me. I was shocked and yes this is legal.

  • Unbelievable, they always promise prosperity and then deliver disappointment.

  • Jack,

    You may want to study recent political occurrences happening in 2024 in both Venezuela and Iran.

    First, Venezuela is hardly “capitalist “ as you state. Venezueta’s government is ruled by a dictator named Nicolas Maduro. He and his henchmen run a totalitarian government very much like their compatriots in Cuba – hardly “capitalist”. In a capitalist society there is economic freedom and free elections. Not so in either Venezuela or Cuba.

    Secondly, Iran also is hardly a “ capitalist “ country as you state. Iran is a theocracy. That is, it is run by religious, some have labelled them as fanatics, but we will not judge. Political freedom does not exist here.

    You stating unequivocally Venezuela and Iran “. . . are mostly capitalist with some socialism like the USA “ is completely erroneous and false. If there is any socialism in the USA, it certainly is not comparable with any political ideology in totalitarian or theocratic societies.

    You may want to peruse a political science textbook to edify your understanding of what constitutes “ communism “, “ socialism “, and, “capitalism “.

  • If Chavez was still in power and alive he would have more then remedied this. This is disgusting. The embargo is extremly outdated and cruel with the US. Like a toddler having a tantrum still to this day

  • Where is empathy and humanity blaming poor Habaneros for an event that happened 74 years ago when these poor people weren’t even born. They are stuck and wealthier Cubans here blame them without helping. What power do you envision they have is fantasy. They are stuck and have no agency and in this dystopia. If we open up again as Obama did then capitalism will follow. I know. I’ve been there with foods and medicines. Many of you who don’t care should be ashamed.

  • Venezuela and Iran are not communist they are mostly capitalist with some socialism like the USA, the USA has socialism a little for the working and middle class and a lot for the rich and corporations.

  • It’s not worth wasting time, Cuba gets what it deserves, you wanted a revolution complaining about how you suffer under Batista. Guess what you been suffering since 1959 ever since then you have not accomplished anything just going backwards in every category so go ahead and keep blaming the embargo, you trade with the rest of the world including the much hated USA so you reap what you sow.

  • We still have “useful idiots” that blame the embargo for the disaster that is Cuba. Ignorance or willful blindness?

  • This type of thing can happen anywhere if we’re not careful.
    Unfortunately, most people just do what they’re told and still believe leaders care about them.

    Just go to work, wear your mask, and be quiet. Don’t say “fat”, don’t say anything that people don’t want to hear because they’re sensitive.
    That’s step one. Steps two, three etc. will be coming…Cuba (I lived there for 6 years) is just way further along in the cycle than the West…Let’s see what happens…

  • The embargo is a problem for sure but the biggest problem is the incompetent communist government. They have no clue how to run an economy. They’ve been operating a false economy for decades, propped up by other communist states that no longer are able to bail them out.

  • Ah !! Comunism…Really ?? Do any of you know what that means ??Educate yourselves !! It’s a F…..G DICTATORSHIP !! Wake up morons ! Look at the way the so called Communist leaders
    live !! Russia,China North Korea,Iran,Cuba,Venezuela…
    No one in the West ,to this day,has had the “b…s” to tell that Russian maggot how the Allies saved their ass in WW2….supplying them with food,armaments and so forth…but , as gratitude ,he wants to recreate the great Rusky empire !
    It is a known fact throughout history…a country,people that forget their past have no future !
    Did I miss anyone ??
    By the way ,past history is not taught in western society schools,like I was,oh ! Is too politically incorrect ??
    Remember PM Chamberlain…
    WW2

  • The question is how to get U.S. imperialism with its total war of embargo, sanctions, propaganda, threats against travelers and traders, etc off the back of Cuba and its people. That is what most people want and that is seen yearly in the vote in the UN against the “ US economic and trade embargo embargo”, to quote the UN news release regarding the last vote which was 187 votes against and only the U.S. and its bosom ally Israel in favor.

  • It is not just the shortages of fuel and electricity. It almost impossible to find basic medicines or anything else needed
    Many people who are retired from other countries like Canada tell me that even with taking 200 lbs of items needed when come down it is impossible to even get many needed items to last 6 winter months of the year

Comments are closed.