By Rodrigo Acuña
This article was originally published by Truthout
Residents of Havana discuss the obstacles facing the revival of the Cuban economy amid the US fuel blockade.
Last month, Cuban Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz declared that 158 new economic and social measures, out of an original package of 176 approved in July by the Cuba’s National Assembly, were being implemented and backed by 197 legal decrees. The measures include allowing private business to import medicines and other goods, loosening restrictions on private tourism, and authorising privately owned banks — under Central Bank supervision — on a regulatory basis equivalent to state banks. Adding to these measures, the National Assembly for the first time permitted foreign capital to invest directly in Cuban private businesses instead of having to operate exclusively through state-controlled structures. Private companies also will no longer be restricted to a maximum of 100 employees.
According to Daniel Torralbas, a London-based Cuban economist, the National Assembly’s new measures are “the most profound economic reform programme … since the 1959 revolution.” Headed by Fidel Castro, the government in Havana between the mid and late 1960s nationalized a vast array of U.S.-owned businesses that controlled major shares in key industries such as public utilities, mining, railways and infrastructure, and land and agriculture.
Mauricio Alonso, a 68-year-old former nuclear engineer who lives in Havana and now runs an Airbnb rental, is embracing the government’s new economic measures.
“On a personal level this is going to benefit me,” says Alonso, “because it’s going to allow, for example, me — since I’m self-employed — to partner with foreigners, to team up, to be part of a larger organization, and to carry out actions with my lodging business, and so on.” Working with travel agencies, in Alonso’s view, will now be made easier with the lifting of restrictions. “If I qualify, if I get accredited as such,” says Alonso, “I can carry out the work of a tour guide without any kind of problem.”
During the 1980s, Alonso worked at the Central Electronuclear de Juraguá, near the city of Cienfuegos, which was being built with the aid of the Soviet Union to become Cuba’s first nuclear power station. Alonso says that, “when the Soviet Union collapsed in late 1991, work on the plant came to a halt in 1992.” Although Alonso continued working in the nuclear sector until 1995, he “realized that the project couldn’t go on — due in part to [the] intense pressure from the U.S. government.” At that point, he decided to “switch to the private sector and start renting out rooms” after inheriting a large apartment from his mother.
Had Cuba’s nuclear power station become operational, it is doubtful the island would be facing its current energy crisis.
Despite a small recovery between 2021 and 2022, after Cuba’s GDP in 2020 contracted by 10.9 percent as COVID-19 effectively shut down international tourism, the island’s economic crisis has been worsened by the Trump administration’s fuel embargo. When U.S. President Donald Trump began to take action against Venezuela’s oil shipments to Cuba in 2025, which approximated 26,500 barrels per day, Cubans saw a serious reduction of fuel on the island. On January 29, the Trump administration formalized the oil sanctions on Cuba by signing Executive Order 14380, which did not simply add another sanction on the island, but instead, created a mechanism to penalize third countries that supply oil to Cuba. Should a country provide crude oil or petroleum products, then the United States government can impose further tariffs on that country’s goods entering the U.S.
For Amalia Díaz Pérez, a 21-years old recent graduate in philosophy from the University of Havana, the Trump administration’s oil embargo disrupted her final year of study. Speaking to Truthout, she said:
The total blockade of fuel imports — with only one ship arriving in nine months — caused public transportation to disappear and reduced daily electricity availability to a minimum. Consequently, my study conditions and most of my daily recreational activities were affected. Compounding this situation, household chores became increasingly difficult due to the strain of the nationwide fuel shortage placed on water and food supplies.
From Díaz Pérez’s perspective, “poverty and inequality have been rising in Cuba for a few years now due to Trump’s policies of hostility, resulting in increased street violence.” She claims that since January, the situation has become “more palpable” due to insufficient street lighting at night, which has contributed to an upsurge in insecurity.
According to a recent report by UNICEF, by mid-May, Cubans were experiencing 20 hours of daily blackouts while infant mortality rates have doubled to 9.9 per 1,000 births. “Children are dying because doctors lack access to essential medical supplies and medicines. This is unacceptable,” said UN human rights chief Volker Türk.
Asked about the government’s new economic policies aimed at addressing Cuba’s serious economic difficulties, Díaz Pérez said the “measures seek a way out of the unjust commercial dynamics in which the country is entangled.” In her view, once the measures are implemented, the “initial beneficiaries will be those with the means to invest — both wealthy locals and foreigners — and the neediest members of the population who can be subsidized by the tax revenue generated from those investments.”
Unfortunately, says Díaz Pérez, the “ultimate success” of the government’s strategy will depend “heavily” on whether other countries are willing to confront the United States in defense of Cuban economic sovereignty. Under the present U.S. blockade, Díaz Pérez claims investments “would not be based on fair and equitable terms, but would instead serve merely to extract wealth,” and poverty for most Cubans would remain.
Taking the above factors into consideration, Díaz Pérez claims that countries like Vietnam and China, together with Cuban expatriates, have already announced plans for economic collaboration.
In June this year, the Vietnamese Foreign Minister Lê Hoài Trung visited the Mariel Special Development Zone (ZEDM) where Vietnam has the second-largest foreign business presence. According to Ana Teresa Igarza Martínez, the general director of this economic enclave, the accords between Cuba and Vietnam cover “sectors such as industry, agri-food activity, the production of disposable diapers and detergent, the development of renewable energies, in addition to others such as the commerce sector and financial and banking.”
Also in June, the Vietnamese rice producer AgriVMA handed over 1,200 metric tons of rice to the Cuban agro-industrial company Los Palacios in the second rice shipment to the island under a 2026 bilateral agreement. Previously, in September 2024, according to one report, AgriVMA collaborated with Los Palacios in the Pinar del Rio province on “rice cultivation across over 1,000 hectares, providing seeds, fertilisers, pesticides, machinery, and technical assistance to Cuban farming households.” As reported on Cuban state media, in 2026, 900 hectares of rice have been planted.
Speaking in July to the National Assembly, Marrero said the new economic measures have allowed 13 foreign business to directly hire a national workforce while authorization to import fuels has been approved to more than 100 non-state actors.
Although a wave of new investments from China have not occurred since the recent economic measures were announced by Havana, by August, China delivered 5000 solar systems to the Caribbean country. In 2019, Chinese solar panel supplies to the island stood at $16.6 million while in 2025, that figure increased to $117 million with at least 34 solar parks currently working throughout Cuba with Chinese technology.
Currently, China’s Shanghai Electric and a British company are understood to have invested $60 million in the Mariel Solar Park. According to Cuban economist Ricardo Torres, a visiting scholar at American University in Washington, “the use of Chinese technology does not stem from investments by Chinese companies. China acts as a supplier, and the Cuban side must pay for the equipment and technical assistance,” which it is understood has been paid for with nickel produced on the island.
Earlier in September, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Trade Óscar Pérez-Oliva said the country’s new policies “could have an impact on the economy in the short term,” however, he also added that their concrete scope cannot be estimated because of “external pressure we cannot ignore” — i.e., the U.S. embargo.
Reflecting on Cubans’ current economic hardships, Grisel Eulalia Reyes León, Cuba’s former Vice Minister of Communications, told Truthout that there are “days when discouragement gets the better of me.”
“I feel trapped in a modern-day concentration camp, where [the U.S. government] seeks to break us through hunger and exhaustion.” Defiantly she added, “yet, I assure you, we will not give up.” Reyes León said that if she previously hated the U.S. economic blockade of her country and those that promote it, “since January my rejection has grown stronger and more intense — yet it is also tempered by the realization that our only way forward lies in [national] unity and creativity.”
Like many Cubans, Reyes León believes that the success of the new economic measures the Cuban government has implemented will significantly depend on the actions of the Trump administration. “The empire goes after banks that do business with Cuba, sanctions investors, and prohibits the use of the dollar in transactions with our island,” she said. As a result, she argued, “foreign capital fears U.S. fines” — a significant obstacle for a government seeking to attract the investment necessary to revive the Cuban economy.
On the other hand, Reyes León conceded that Cuba has its own shortfalls which “must be overcome.” An “excessive bureaucracy, administrative inertia, and resistance to change in certain sectors” mean that Cuban society will be compelled to “take a hard look at ourselves and become more efficient.”
On a personal level, Reyes León told Truthout she has family in the city of Santa Clara (about 160 miles from Havana) and has not been able to visit them in five years because “transportation is unfeasible.” If a foreign company to set up a spare parts plant for buses and interprovincial services were restored, Reyes León believes she would be able to see her loved ones more frequently. On a broader level, she added that “if young people find opportunities to lead a dignified and prosperous life,” she would also see the new economic measures as a success, as young Cubans may be willing to stay on the island “building their country alongside their families.”
Argentine journalist Gabriel Vera Lopes, who writes for Brasil de Fato, has been living in Havana for several years. Vera Lopes said the current crisis is the most profound the country has lived since the revolution took power.
Vera Lopes described how, because of Trump’s latest round of sanctions earlier this year, foreign companies in the hotel and mining industry that have been operating in Cuba for more than 30 years have recently departed from the island.“We are talking about two key sectors … that can provide foreign currency to the country.” In this regard, adds Vera Lopes, “the offensive, the strangulation, the economic war being waged against Cuba is aimed at targeting each of the resources and each of the ways in which the Cuban state tries to maintain some degree of social cohesion, some kind of business activity, some kind of sustainability.”
Due to Trump’s oil embargo, Vera Lopes told Truthout, “the impact on transport across the island has generated one of the perhaps less visible, but no less dramatic, consequences: the country’s industry has been brought to a complete standstill.”
Despite the enormous difficulties faced by Cubans, Reyes León rejects the view that Cuban society is falling apart, as has been promoted by some “international media outlets.” She said “that exaggerated narrative seeks to discredit us.” Reyes León conceded that the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDRs), which since 1960 have served as neighbourhood-based mass organization that combines community mobilizations, social programs and political surveillance, “do not operate with the same vigor as in the past,” but added that:
… in every neighborhood, the people remain the primary watchdogs. On my block, if someone steals, the neighbors themselves point them out and report them. We know that the real enemy is not the fellow Cuban struggling alongside you, but rather Yankee imperialism and its lackeys, who prevent us from developing.
According to Mauricio Alonso, the current fuel crisis has pushed Cubans to become even more creative in resisting the U.S. oil embargo. He told Truthout how solar powered electric tricycles have now become more common throughout Havana while “most performances — such as those by the National Ballet of Cuba — begin at 5:00 p.m. (while there is still daylight), and by 8:00 or 8:30 p.m., everyone is back home.”
There are “plenty” of economic hardships, said Mauricio Alonso, but Cubans “have not lost our will to live.”
“We do not want a country dominated by a foreign power — as has unfortunately happened in Venezuela.” In Cuba, he said defiantly, “there are no Delcy Rodríguezes.”
This article was originally published by Truthout and is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). Please maintain all links and credits in accordance with our republishing guidelines.
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