The USA Keeps Tightening the Screws on Cuba
Reality has played a cruel joke on us here in Cuba, and now the only music in fashion is the silence of the refrigerator.
HAVANA TIMES – If anyone still had doubts that he was serious, this January 31 the president of the United States, Donald Trump, made it clear that there will be no mercy for those who finance the Cuban Communist Party tyranny.
Trump—better known for his scorching tweets on social media or his incendiary rhetoric than for common sense—sent a direct message to the allies of the Cuban dictatorship, especially Mexico, whose oil took on the role of savior after the Venezuela source collapsed and, according to unofficial data, was supplying 30 percent of the island’s energy.
President Claudia Sheinbaum warned about the consequences of cutting off crude supplies to the island, but from the White House she was reminded that those PEMEX ships are not filling the tanks of the Cuban people, but of the repressive machinery—and that cutting those 25,000 barrels a day is not an act of cruelty, but a masterstroke in the grand chessboard of international power.
At a time when on this island any resource seems scarcer than a unicorn in the middle of a storm, Mexico has become the dictatorship’s last artificial respirator. Russia, embroiled in its own war with Ukraine and not exactly flush with cookies to share, demands payments that seem to have been set by a pawnshop—and there isn’t a dollar here to meet them.
In addition, a group of Republican Congresspeople has formalized a proposal for the total suspension of flights and remittances to the island to further suffocate the regime. The logic is as clear as the reason cats always land on their feet: shutting off the financial oxygen tap may be the only viable solution.
These would be painful steps—of course they hurt—but they appear to be the only way to dismantle this predatory state that uses tourism revenues to finance its repressive apparatus rather than to improve roads, transportation, food production, energy, and the long list of hardships Cubans endure—not to mention democratic freedoms.
Cuba has less energy than a dead battery, but geopolitically isolated and without its main logistical partner, surrender is not in the high nomenklatura’s dictionary. So, they will try to seek new alliances, negotiate somehow—even though the erosion of trust and mutual understanding is evident—or wait for an exhausted populace to push them from power.
This is not a game of Monopoly. Lives and freedoms are at stake, and we do not know whether these measures will be the catalyst that pushes the military to break ranks with the tyranny, aware that they can negotiate an exit now or face international courts tomorrow.
In this new context, the statement issued by the bishops on January 31 can be read as an urgent cry for help. It speaks of “immediate structural changes,” and according to the Cuban Catholic Church, inaction is no longer an option but a death sentence for the people.
The Church is not positioning itself merely as an observer of reality; it is taking on an active role, demanding that those with the power to influence the country’s political and social dynamics act in the face of the population’s suffering.
In some way, they decided to bypass protocol and call for help from those who can exert pressure—something like an ultimatum—tired of being the population’s lifeline by constantly stepping forward to ask for international economic aid.
Nevertheless, the dictatorship lets this go in one ear and out the other, as it has just shown by ambushing the US Chargé d’Affaires to Cuba, Mike Hammer, with an orchestrated hate rally in the central-eastern province of Camagüey.
It is a systematic pattern already carried out in Trinidad (Sancti Spíritus) and on Regla’s “Lanchita” ferry (Havana), where it similarly deployed its shock groups—routinely mobilized by State Security—to try to intimidate the diplomat.
This strategy of harassment and intimidation is clumsy; indeed, far from halting Hammer’s agenda, it validates the thesis that dialogue with these criminals in power is impossible. It is one of the reasons sanctions arrived instead of warnings—the bill for not knowing when to stop.
In a message on social media, the official reiterated that his mission is to reach “more ordinary Cubans” and talk with them about their “aspirations” and “desires for a better Cuba,” adding that those who attack him “do not represent the Cuban people,” but the ruling Party.
Let us remember that since the first months of 2025, relations between the Cuban regime and Hammer have been marked by rising tension, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MINREX) even officially summoned him to accuse him of inciting citizens to commit crimes and undermine the constitutional order.
They continue to fall back on that desperate narrative that dissent is dangerous and must be repressed, in order to deny the need for structural change that respects the rights and aspirations of the Cuban people.
Meanwhile, on the streets things get worse every day, and prices keep climbing relentlessly—as if to prove that the tantrum against El Toque (for publishing the informal foreign currency rates) was nothing more than another pantomime, and that they have no resources to straighten out the currency market.
For years they tried to sell us the idea that the lights would never go out, that refrigerators would always be full—but reality has played a cruel joke on us, and now the only music in fashion is the silence of the refrigerator.
Only in dollar stores or in mipymes (private businesses) do you see those aisles stocked with dairy products and sugar—hard to believe the sugar industry was once our main economic sector.
Many people are cooking with charcoal, like in Cuban National Hero Jose Martí’s time—when, according to the recent reflection of a well-known regime apologist, he didn’t need electric light to be a genius. Clearly, life keeps surprising us.
With water and hope, you can make a fine gourmet dinner—of course you can.