HAVANA — As U.S. seizures of oil tankers linked to Venezuela increase, concerns are growing in Cuba about the survival of the island’s government and economy.
Experts warn that a sudden halt in Venezuelan oil shipments to Cuba could lead to widespread social unrest and mass migration following the U.S. military raid that resulted in the capture of former President Nicolás Maduro.
“I would be lying if I told you I didn’t want to leave the country,” said Amanda Gómez, a 16-year-old Cuban student. “We are all thinking about leaving, from the youngest to the oldest.”
Long before the Jan. 3 attack, severe power cuts were shutting down life in Cuba, where people had to queue at gas stations and supermarkets amid the island’s worst economic crisis in decades.
The lack of Venezuelan oil could push Cuba to the brink, experts say.
“This is going to push an already dire situation to new extremes,” said Michael Galant, senior research and advocacy associate at the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, DC. “This is what a collapsing economy looks like. »
Galant said he believed that was the Trump administration’s goal: “to cause indiscriminate suffering to the civilian population to the point of provoking some sort of uprising, regime change.”
“This type of siege of Cuba is very intentional. Will it work from their point of view? I think the Cuban people have been suffering for a very long time, and the Cuban government knows very well how to handle these situations,” Galant said. “I think it’s very difficult to predict what will or will not trigger actual instability in the regime. From (US Secretary of State Marco) Rubio’s point of view, it’s kind of a waiting game. … There’s always a breaking point.”
From 2020 to 2024, Cuba saw its population decline by 1.4 million, which experts attribute largely to migration spurred by the worsening crisis.
Juan Carlos Albizu-Campos, a Cuban economist and demographic expert, noted that even though Cubans with means have already left, migration will continue.
“Fuel is a factor that affects everything,” he said. “People will feel like they are in worse conditions, and those who had not considered leaving will feel the need to do so.”
At the Spanish Embassy in Havana on Friday, Ernesto Macías, a 53-year-old doctor, stood in line behind dozens of people to apply for a family member visa for his daughter, having already obtained her Spanish citizenship.
“I wouldn’t want Cuba to be invaded or anything like that. I hope that doesn’t happen, but I’m sure people will continue to emigrate because there’s no other way,” he said.
Cuba’s gross domestic product has fallen 15% over the past six years, and President Miguel Díaz-Canel noted in December that there had been a 4% decline in 2025 alone.
Although Cuba’s economy never fully recovered after the fall of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, it enjoyed relative prosperity between 2000 and 2019, fueled by a boom in tourism and exports of services, nickel, rum and tobacco.
Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and coupled with a radical increase in U.S. sanctions under the second Trump administration to push for political change – stifling every sector imaginable – the Cuban crisis erupted with force.
Even so, Cuba remained dependent on Venezuela for its oil, receiving about 35,000 barrels per day from the South American country before the U.S. attack, as well as some 5,500 barrels per day from Mexico and about 7,500 from Russia, according to Jorge Piñón of the University of Texas Energy Institute at Austin, who tracks shipments using oil tracking services and satellite technology.
Even with all those shipments, outages persisted, experts noted.
“An indefinite shutdown of the electricity system, which is no longer so impossible to imagine, can be envisaged in the event of a total suspension of oil shipments from Venezuela, which seems to be the current strategy of the US government,” said Jorge Duany, of the Cuban Research Institute at Florida International University.
“That would lead us to imagine the possibility of mass protests,” he said.
Andy S. Gómez, retired dean of the School of International Studies and senior fellow in Cuban studies at the University of Miami, said that even if protests were taking place, he did not envision the fall of Cuba as long as Raúl Castro was still alive and leading the military.
“Are they worried? You bet,” Gómez said. “They are not well armed; their equipment is obsolete.”
But Gómez stressed that civilians are unarmed and that any of the three factions in the Cuban military are unlikely to break with the ruling elite.
“At the end of the day, someone will have to take the big man’s pill, and it will be either Díaz-Canel or (Prime Minister) Manuel Marrero Cruz for failing to resolve the problems,” Gómez said.
U.S. forces seized their fifth tanker on Friday as part of a broader campaign by the Trump administration to control the global distribution of Venezuelan oil products.
It is not clear whether any of the seized tankers were bound for Cuba, but experts say any blockage of the supply line would be a shock given the fragile economy of the island.
As uncertainty persists, Gómez said Cuba has only one card to play with the United States: mass migration.
“I don’t think the Cubans are going to provoke the United States at this point,” he said, adding that Cuban authorities “can absolutely control this.”
“Cuban military forces are on alert,” he said.
Gómez added that even if the worsening crisis led to unrest and the ouster of a top government official, that person would likely be replaced by a well-known figure.
“It would just be the continuation of government,” he said, adding that he did not think it would upset the majority of the island. “Unfortunately, the Cuban people currently only care about one thing…they want to put food on the table, have electricity, have a place to live, have a job and then what to do with the government. »
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Coto reported from San Juan, Puerto Rico. Associated Press journalist Milexsy Durán in Havana contributed to this report.
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