Is the revolution in Cuba over?

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1:30advisory services provided by Wealthfront Advisors, LLC, an SEC-registered investment advisor. Hello, I'm Tanya Beckett. Welcome to the documentary from the BBC World Service. I host The Inquiry, where each week we ask one big question and get answers from four of the world's leading experts on that topic. You can find us wherever you get your BBC podcasts. In this bonus episode, we turn to Cuba, where mounting pressure from the United States is deepening an already severe energy crisis. And we ask, is the revolution over? Before we begin, I just wanted to let you know that this episode was recorded on the 19th of March.

2:17Cuba is facing one of its most severe humanitarian crises in decades. The island lies less than 200 kilometres off the coast of the US state of Florida and has for decades attempted to distance itself from its far more powerful neighbour to the north. But now it finds itself caught in its grip. For a quarter of a century, Cuba has relied on oil from Venezuela. The United States is now enforcing a de facto naval blockade on fuel shipments to Cuba, preventing tankers from reaching the island and deepening its energy crisis. Cuba has faced worsening fuel shortages, with electricity blackouts becoming increasingly common across the island and disrupting everyday life for many Cubans.

3:04In the past four weeks, the US-Israel war with Iran has occupied much of President Donald Trump's foreign policy agenda. But he has suggested his focus may soon turn to Cuba. I do believe I'll be the honour of having the honour of taking Cuba. Taking Cuba. I mean, whether I free it, take it, I think I can do anything I want with it. You want to know the truth? They're a very weakened nation. Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel says his government has opened channels with Washington to ease the crisis through negotiation. But he's warned that any attempt to seize the country would meet what he calls unbreakable resistance.

3:49With Cuba facing economic strain, dwindling oil supplies and pressure from Washington, this week on The Inquiry, we're asking, is the revolution in Cuba over? Part one, the sugar rush. To understand why Cuba is caught in a political battle that has left it with such dire shortages, I'd like to take you back to over a century ago. And to do that, I've enlisted the help of our first expert witness.

4:21Lillian Guerra, Professor of Cuban and Caribbean History at the University of Florida. In 1898, the United States entered into a four-month war with Spain. It won a decisive victory, which, amongst other things, gave America control of Cuba. Part of America's incentive for the war was to secure its interests in a commodity which was fast becoming a regular feature of ordinary people's diets. That commodity was sugar. Within a quarter of a century, Cuba's output of what was then dubbed white gold increased fivefold, transforming it into a massive industrial scale exporter. But most of the sugar itself and the profits from producing it went not to the people of Cuba, but to America.

5:11So when in 1952 Cubans sought change that would threaten US interests, Washington installed a military dictator. Fulgencio Batista's leadership was defined by brutality against his own people, and corruption was endemic. When Batista carries out that coup in 1952, you get an end to political pluralism. So you have the mafia, you have crony capitalism, you have atrocities perpetrated by Batista's security forces against the opposition, you have periodic censorship, and as of 1953, you have the use of martial law. After six long years, Batista's regime finally collapsed, clearing the way for the man who had long been waiting in the wings and was to go on to define Cuba's path for the next half century, a revolutionary by the name of Fidel Castro.

6:06So when Batista flees, there is almost immediately an electric euphoria that shakes the country And people pour out onto the streets. Fidel Castro is having a Christmas dinner at his mom and his dad's house. And he discovers that what he thought was going to be a much longer war suddenly ended in triumph. And almost immediately, the engine of change begins to move. And it is unanimously celebrated, I would say, by the vast majority of Cubans. The effect on Cuba's society was immediate and transformational. And then we have just this amazing year in 1959 of pro-capitalist, nationalist policies, 1 ,500 different laws being immediately decreed by the new state.

6:56And it changes people's lives. And it changes the lives not just of the poor, but it changes the lives of middle class people, of working class people. So 1959 is really a triumph of the Cuban people's demands, desires, and a really long-standing historical mandate to put Cuba's economy and its government in the hands of the people. But after just a year, Castro's leadership started to take a more authoritarian turn. Fidel decrees the nationalization of all foreign companies. Young people are mobilized into militias to defend against a U.S. invasion that actually hasn't even been organized yet.

7:39And then in October, things really take a radical route, which is when Fidel decrees the nationalization of all middle and large-sized Cuban businesses. And so that means that by December, suddenly you have a communist state without actually embracing communism officially. You have a state that controls 80 percent of the economy in Cuba. Castro may not have explicitly embraced communism, but Cuba needed oil, and one place that had that oil was the Soviet Union. In 1960, the USSR started to supply the black stuff to Cuba in return for white gold or sugar. Meanwhile, America, frozen out and watching the flourishing of this alliance less than 200 kilometres from its coastline, was deeply alarmed.

8:29It was, after all, in the midst of a bitter Cold War with the Soviet Union, and Moscow appeared to be gaining a foothold right in its backyard. So in 1961, the US launched a ground invasion at Cuba's Bay of Pigs, aimed at overthrowing the government of Fidel Castro. But the mission was a failure, and Castro tightened his grip. But Fidel Castro is pretty much governing economically by whim and by his own instinct. which produce great disasters. Things like the cattle industry almost completely disappear. Nobody's getting access to beef or pork on a regular basis because free markets are gone. And in so many ways, it's a disaster.

9:13But Castro didn't end there. In 1962, America discovered that Cuba was housing nuclear missiles belonging to the Soviets. US President Kennedy and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev engaged in a tense standoff. It was the closest the world had come to nuclear conflict since the Second World War. And so when Kennedy announces to the US public on live television and shows satellite pictures of the placement of these missiles, there are 13 days of panic. There was this kind of brinkmanship between the Soviet Union and the United States, but never had the stakes been so high. The missiles were in the end removed under UN supervision.

9:57Then, 30 years later, the Soviet Union unraveled. And with it, Cuba's key economic ally. And we'll come back to what happened in the 1990s a little later. Meanwhile, let's fast forward to the early 2000s, when relations with the United States started to improve under first President Bill Clinton, and then more particularly his fellow Democrat Barack Obama in 2011. What we had from 2011 to 2017 was a dramatic expansion of prosperity. There was visible growth of small businesses on the island. There was also more food in Havana and Cienfuegos and Santiago that I had ever seen in my previous 20 years of being present in Cuba and constantly visiting.

10:45But sadly, it wasn't to last. Time for our second expert witness. Part two, homegrown disaster. Everything that's come after 2020, it's a whole new level in terms of the difficulties of daily life, the deterioration of public services. In the wake of Obama's re-establishing of ties with Cuba, the island entered what became known as the golden years of tourism. Visitor numbers hit record highs. But when in 2020 tighter US travel restrictions were imposed by the Trump administration and the COVID-19 pandemic, the country once again hit a downward spiral. Ricardo Torres is a Cuban-born economist.

11:38He's a research fellow at American University based in Washington, D.C. COVID was a big shock for the economy and life in Cuba, generally speaking. Tourism was a major industry for Cuba. It was present in many towns throughout the country. I mean, those are businesses run by families, individuals, selling different services and even goods to visitors. And it was important for families' budget. Cuba's tourism effectively collapsed, with international arrivals plunging almost three quarters in 2020 to just over a million and falling by a further two-fifths in 2021. Cuba never really recovered pre-COVID levels in terms of international arrivals, never.

12:27So there was some growth in 2022 and 2023, but then it went down again in 2024 and 2025. And well, 2026 looks like it's going to be an even worse year. And families feel that pain as well because they got resources, they got money from visitors. The pandemic cut off many essential supply chains. Kiwa is an island. Almost all imports come by the sea. So shipping costs skyrocketed and that also impacted the economy. And I think that was not initially visible in 2020. But the situation then from 2021 onwards got from bad to worse. An additional blow came from a homegrown disaster. There was one Cuban peso pegged to the dollar and another peso that was not.

13:24And the government decided to unpick this dual currency system. It was, says our expert witness, the worst possible timing. It didn't work. It didn't work because it was not well designed. The exchange rate that they started with was not realistic. was not market-based at that time. It was already overvalued. The result inevitably is that the prices will go up and they've gone up significantly in the case of Cuba. State employees, pensioners, people like that, they suffer. Inflation rocketed, food prices spiked and by early 2025 shortages were widespread across the country. By this time, Cubans had over several decades seen their hopes for a brighter future dashed and many opted simply to leave.

14:18There is growing frustration. We've seen the big wave of Cuban migration happening in the last six years and that tells the story of people that do not see a future for them on the island, that do not see remedy. Between late 2021 and early 2025, estimates suggest that almost a tenth of the population left. But for those who remained, yet more hardship was yet to come.

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17:54You're listening to The Inquiry from the BBC World Service. We're about to jump into part three. But before we do that, I want to let you know we have a huge archive of inquiry episodes, including Can Rewilding Help Combat Climate Change? And Why Are Our Taps Running Dry? To listen, just search for these episodes in the inquiry feed wherever you get your podcasts. And while you're there, why not click subscribe and turn on push notifications so you never miss a thing. Now, let's continue with this inquiry on Cuba. Part 3. Mutual Survival

18:36In part one, I told you about Cuba's supply of oil from the Soviet Union, a lifeline for the island which was cut off with the demise of the USSR in 1989. But there is one part of the story still missing, and that is how the country survived between the end of the Cold War and the re-establishing of relations with the United States two decades later in 2011. And for that part of the journey, we need to go back to just before the millennium and a man who viewed Cuba's Fidel Castro as a cornerstone of his attempt to revive left-wing politics in Latin America. A man who could give Cuba the oil it needed to keep afloat and get something important in return.

19:20In 1999, that man was elected as the president of Venezuela, and his name was Hugo Chavez. Our third expert witness is Christopher Sabatini, Senior Research Fellow for Latin America at Chatham House, an independent policy think tank based in London. Hugo Chavez, when he was sworn in in 1999, talked about swimming in the sea of happiness created by Fidel Castro towards Cuban socialism and promptly started to give them about 100 ,000 barrels of oil a day, a subsidized race, which the Cuban government used half of to keep the lights on and to provide also fuel for cooking, as well as then sold the remaining half on the global market at global prices, which generated hard currency, which it needed to import food and medicine, among other things.

20:14In return, the Cuban government provided doctors to Venezuela. And if the agreement between Cuba and Venezuela had ended there, then it may not have been so problematic. The trouble is, it didn't. In fact, there was much, much more to it than that. It was a subsidy, yes, but it was also in part payment for services. The Cuban government was providing security assistance and intelligence assistance. They're particularly good at being able to root out potential dissent within those security forces to be able to prevent any coup d 'etat that could remove the government. Clearly, the Cubans got the better end of the bargain in terms of being able to receive and resell oil that they needed for hard currency.

21:00It was, in essence, a cooperation between regimes that ensured their mutual survival. When Chavez died in 2013, it's no surprise then that he was followed by a dictator in much the same mould. Nicolás Maduro went on to lead Venezuela for over a decade. In January, he was dramatically removed by US forces and taken to New York to face trial. Meanwhile, in Cuba, Fidel Castro had died a decade before, but his autocratic leadership style had also survived. So the dilemma now was what did the end of Maduro mean for Cuba? As soon as Nicolas Maduro was extracted, one of the key demands by the US government was Venezuela had to end its oil giveaway program to Cuba.

21:51And for Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State, who's a Cuban-American, For him, this closing off that oil supply from Venezuela to Cuba was the path to finally, after 67 years of a communist regime 90 miles off the coast of Florida, was finally that moment when he could have brought about or thinks he could bring about regime change in Cuba despite a failed embargo. President Trump has said he could, as he puts it, take Cuba, that his capture of Venezuela's Maduro could in effect be replicated in Havana. It created this idea that this could be done neatly, cleanly, with no loss of U.S. lives, maybe even with not many U.S.

22:32fingerprints on it. So we're in a situation here where Trump thinks he has a template for, if you will, regime change, although it's not really regime change, maybe just trying to get a more compliant government, but one that isn't going to work in Cuba for various reasons. The question now is, what might those reasons be?

22:58Changing the power structures in Cuba has something that the Republicans have been talking about for 60 years. And so finally feeling that they are close to doing that is something that would be a symbolic win for many of them after many, many decades of feeling frustrated by this small island that managed to survive without them. When Trump cut off Venezuela's oil shipments to Cuba and threatened to put tariffs on any country that sold oil to the island, its antiquated power grid was strangled, causing blackouts. Fuel prices rocketed and it now costs more than$300 to fill up a car's fuel tank.

23:40This is more than most Cubans earn in a year. Renata Segura is the program director for Latin America and the Caribbean at the International Crisis Group, an independent conflict monitoring organization. The Trump administration understood that that choking strategy was going to really trigger a humanitarian emergency in Cuba. And so what it is allowing right now, US companies, they are allowed to sell oil to private sectors in Cuba. So essentially the idea is that the oil goes not to the government, but only to private actors. So companies, individuals that have the money to do so. So that has alleviated a little bit of the pressure.

24:27But for example, Russia, which was hoping to send oil directly to the Cuban government, that is not allowed. And the Trump administration has posted votes around the island which have determined that no tankers can come into Cuba. So no government-to-government oil is coming right now. In March, Cuba's President Diaz-Canel said that no fuel had entered Cuba for the government in three months, which was the reason for the blackouts. But as we've heard, the US does allow American and foreign companies to sell oil and fuel to private Cuban businesses and individuals, allowing a trickle to get through to where it's needed.

25:10Nonetheless, our final expert witness says the squeeze on Cuba is the most dramatic for over half a century. I think this is probably the weakest moment for the communist regime since the revolution of 1959. I think, obviously, Cuba has faced enormous pressures from the United States for the last few decades to try and really change the way that its political and economic system works. But this seems to be the moment in which they are perhaps the most cornered and where something is going to have to give because the economic situation is really, really as dire as it has ever been. So how does all of this end?

25:57Washington is fairly divided. And I don't think that you can say that the US has one goal in mind. On the one hand, you have the people that have connections with Cuba, many of them Republican congressmen from Florida, and others that have a more ideological take on why Cuba should change. And so there is a very clear anti-communist stand among those centers of the Washington establishment. And those people want regime change. I think there are others that see that it is going to be very difficult to do a real regime change as the one that some of them are wanting. because they understand that the whole state is very sort of coherently connected, that overthrowing the entire thing could just produce chaos and violence, and that maybe something that is a more step-by-step route is the appropriate way around.

27:00Meanwhile, the future of the Cuban people seems once again to be hanging in the balance, which takes us back to our question, is the revolution in Cuba over? The island's dictatorship has brought poverty and repression. But our final expert witness says she's not convinced the current crisis will finally deliver lasting change. Are we going to see the end of the communist regime that has been in place since the revolution that was led by Fidel Castro in 1959? I think that is still a very big question mark. And honestly, today, I would say that we are looking more likely to a situation in which there is an opening of the economic system, but less movement on the political sphere.

27:50I think that that's what I would be putting my money if I had to bet today.

27:57You've been listening to The Inquiry from the BBC World Service. This edition of The Inquiry was presented by me, Tanya Beckett. The producer was Matt Tolson. The researcher was Evie Yabsley. The editor, Tom Bigwood. And the technical producer was Cameron Ward.