Why Cuba is collapsing under Trump’s blockade

0:02Sky News. The full story first.

0:11Donald Trump's oil blockade has brought a country to its knees. But we're not talking about Iran. Instead, Cuba. And this is why.

0:32Hi everyone, Neil here. And with everyone's attention on the Middle East, we thought we'd look in entirely the opposite direction. Because have you heard about the United States blockade of Cuba? Donald Trump's navy has been anchored off its coast since the beginning of the year. And it's choking the life out of this communist Caribbean island. Before the Trump administration, we had problems, he says. But this has been worse, much worse. Indeed, oil, food, medicine, almost everything is running out. This is a country where the lights are off as often as they're on. Now, if that sounds dramatic, it's because it is.

1:10And it's complicated by the fact this was no communist utopia to begin with. They aren't happy with their lives, but they don't see Donald Trump as their saviour. They'd prefer Cuba to do better. And the American blockade is making things worse. So what happens when you take a country already on the edge and give it a shove? And why is hardly anyone talking about it? Our chief correspondent Stuart Ramsey has just got back from Cuba. Stuart, great to see you again. Cuba is not something that we talk about in the way in which we perhaps did 40, 50, 60 years ago. So just explain, in essence, what Cuba is.

1:47So Cuba is a big, actually a big Caribbean island, and it is an incredibly important cultural, social powerhouse within the region. And yet it's been a communist run, post-revolutionary government, Fidel Castro, Che Guevara took over power. then, which young people won't remember, but a nuclear crisis that occurred because Russia was providing potentially nuclear weapons to Cuba, that began a series of sanctions. So this communist government has been running from the 50s, 60s and all the way till now under sanctions pretty much continuously from the United States. A fractious relationship. Fractious relationship.

2:26Bear in mind, it's very, very near, a hundred and something miles away. Huge numbers of Cubans have left the island and live in the States, particularly in Florida. So this diaspora has a lot of opinions about the regime and they've been wanting change. Now it finds itself after all these years, then a quite good period where Barack Obama calmed things down. The relations got better. Tourism grew. Things were much better again. And then the start of this year, President Trump imposed a fuel blockade and that has brought the country to its knees. Take me inside Cuba. Just describe what you saw.

2:58I didn't expect it to be like it was in as much as that we've known that the country has had pretty poor management for a very long time, exacerbated by the sanctions. But obviously, an old collective system of old socialism doesn't usually around the world come up with great results, especially if you've got no proper private sector that, for example, China does have. What struck me is from particularly being with friends who are with me who were there, who have visited many times, they never saw people going through rubbish bins on the street. They never saw people sleeping rough. They never really saw homeless.

3:35Being homeless wasn't really allowed. There was also not much reason for it because everyone had a home. The longest running rationing system in the world is in Cuba. And when I say rationing, it means that everyone gets tickets to buy essential rice oil for cooking oil for virtually nothing. All paid for by the state. Those shops, the bodegas as they're called, are either shut or empty. And I mean actually empty. Just the shelves. Just the shelves. Maybe the odd bit of something there, some chickpeas or something, but nothing of importance. Nothing for people to survive on. Long queues for a single loaf of bread per person.

4:11So not necessarily a loaf. It could just be a roll. Are we at the point of calling it famine? We're not there because there is still food there. However it gets there, I mean, I really – I don't know though it's running out all the time. But it's the – if you like, the poor people or when I say the poor people as if they're a minority, that's by far the majority who depend upon the state for everything. And the state is no longer able to provide it because it doesn't have a couple of things. One is fuel, but the fuel powers everything, right? So the whole thing slowly falls apart. Terrible money supply problems are your queue to get money out of a cash machine.

4:48and that's limited. Inflation that's out of control. There's no safety net for any of these people who were dependent on the state providing for them. What effect then has this had on kind of the infrastructure that any kind of country needs to be functional? We're talking hospitals, we're talking education. Is this a functional country at the moment? Not really. So right in the centre of Havana, which is next to the Capitol building, which looks very much like the American Capitol building and a few of the government buildings around it and some big hotels. All look fantastic and nothing's changed.

5:21You go one street back, the buildings are literally falling down. People are living in those buildings that are literally falling down. I mean, that is interesting to me because I think those of us of a certain age who maybe had a poster of revolutionary Che Guevara on the wall have always had this romanticised ideal of Havana, our man in Havana, these beautiful pastel coloured buildings. But this is a city that is literally crumbling. Literally crumbling down. And a lady who I was interviewing, she runs a charity, but she's also a tourist guy saying that people would come to her and say, okay, so when was the fighting?

5:54When was the war that took place? And she said, no, there's not been any war, but it looks like it. It looks like parts of Ukraine in cities that have been attacked. And so you have a facade of an enormous hotel, but the whole of the back's fallen down. That lack of any support, like the upkeep of buildings, suggests a society that is very, very close to collapse if it hasn't actually collapsed or anything. Yes. The structure of the buildings aside, the rubbish is everywhere because they haven't got fuel to go and pick up the trucks that would go and pick up the rubbish. People are going through the bins that are not being emptied and looking for food.

6:29That's a real sign. I've been in Venezuela and saw that never on this sort of scale. I mean, occasionally you'd see people, but this is like right in the center of town, near any restaurants that are still working. And that is happening. People sleeping rough. Hospitals, entirely dependent, particularly once you get to nightfall, on generators. And those are not all working. The medicine in pharmacies is almost completely gone. The hospitals are struggling as well. And Cuba was famous for both its education and its medicine. 100%. And in fact, doctors from Cuba would be sent around the world in a deal, particularly to Mexico, for example, where they would get benefits back from them.

7:10The schooling system, they now have to stop at lunchtime and they don't give lunch anymore. So the kids only go in the mornings. And most children would have had at least one meal a day in school and now they're sent home at lunchtime with no food. Stuart, you have been to some of the worst places in the world. You went in knowing this was going to be bad, But was there a moment that remains with you till now where you realised, look, this is a lot worse than I was expecting? Yeah, it was definitely the centre of town. People actually getting food out of bins and eating it there and then. And it's definitely rotting.

7:44And that was a bit of a wow. So, for example, I was asked about this and we talked about it while we were there. Is it Haiti? No, it's not. But it's beginning to look like Haiti. It doesn't have the violence of Haiti. It doesn't have the crime gangs because of a very strong government that's run for a very long time on fairly strict moral terms and a very strong security service. So you don't have the sort of Haiti breakdown, but it's beginning to look like it. And it physically looked like it. And people who are in the same sort of state, which is living in a decrepit, fallen down buildings, different reasons why they got there, but it's beginning to look very much the same.

8:20And it's Cuba. It shouldn't be like this. It's too big to fail almost, but it's failing. Well, let's examine the reasons why this failure has taken place. And it is all to do with the Trump administration. We have had sanctions in place on Cuba since time immemorial, frankly. But this blockade is something new. It is something new. Cuba has been something that Trump has been irritated with for a very long time, in his first term and now in his second. He has advised, as Marco Rubio, one of the most obvious ones, who is Cuban-American. A lot of the diaspora are very strongly against the regime.

8:53They have no affection for Castro. They consider that their families were disrupted and they went abroad from their beloved island, which in those days when they left was particularly grand in comparison to any other island in the Caribbean. And so they're in his ear. Venezuela happened and that was, you know, there was a couple of things there. One, another left wing or socialist government. Trump doesn't like that, but obviously has loads of oil, which he does like. Did he want regime change? Possibly. Did he believe in democracy? Possibly. Doesn't look it. Looks like regime compliance is what he's after.

9:26And I think we have the hawks who would like regime change. My personal view is I think with a country that has been like this, as you say, from the 50s and 60s, it's hard to imagine just it all being forgotten overnight. And certainly nobody I spoke to there was welcoming the arrival of the United States and Donald Trump on a wiped stallion because they don't think like that. They would just like the country to do better. Most want to be able to have some type of capability to run their private business so they could make their own money. But they're not talking about massive regime change. However, President Trump would like compliance.

9:58And the best bet, I suspect, for Cubans is that negotiations are going and continue to go. Because without it, you go to the next phase, which Trump has also been alluding to, which is actual military intervention. I can see the dots that we need to join to get to that. because at the moment, isn't what the United States is ultimately doing to Cuba is laying siege to it? Totally. It's cut it off. And you've got to wonder about the legality of that. Yeah, I think there's lots of people wondering about the legality of it. President Trump doesn't listen to the United Nations as far as I can see. And the United Nations doesn't seem to be listened to by many countries these days.

10:30But they are all complaining about what's going on. Mexico has been forcibly stopped from providing the lifeline of fuel, which it gave, as well as Venezuela. That has all stopped. So it has been laid siege to. It is part of President Trump's current, the Don Road doctrine, as it's called, where basically they have complete power over the Western Hemisphere. And it's come under that grouping because of its political leanings and the support of Russia. The breakdown of the Soviet Union was probably one of the most critical events that affected Cuba because all of its supplies stopped. Venezuela picked up the slack on that.

11:11That's gone. In between that, they had COVID, which was disastrous for Cuba. And the way it is now, if you stop fuel, you stop tourists. If you stop tourists for Cuba, there's no foreign currency coming out. No foreign currency. Cuba can't buy anything. I mean, was there any tourism that you saw when you were there? There were a few, but I mean, not many, really, really. And it seemed to dwindle even while I was there. I think the first day I arrived, it seemed to be, oh, there's quite a few people here that I didn't expect to see. By the time I left, I think it was just us wandering around the streets.

11:56If Donald Trump were to pursue a kind of a military solution to, in his eyes, the Cuba problem, I mean, one, would it be met with much resistance? And two, are there any other nations who would be willing to support Cuba? I think under the current status, I think the Caribbean countries would be very supportive of Cuba, but there's not much they could actually do about it. Venezuela would have been supportive, but there's not much they can do about it now. And they've also capitulated to a degree with the new acting president, basically following orders from Trump. The military of Cuba exists for certain, right?

12:31But I don't think you take on the United States and they may not have enough petrol to get to the front line. Yeah, we have touched on this already. But I don't think we should underestimate the role that Cuba's government, the state, has contributed to the problems that it experiences. I mean, this is a country that has not necessarily always been run absolutely perfectly, is it? I'd say it's probably been run at various times disastrously. And I didn't think for any moment that I was going and my reporting has been not to suggest that we thought we were going to Switzerland. It was never going to be working well.

13:03I've been to many, many socialist countries, communist countries, which are fundamentally badly run. But was it on the brink before this blockade took place? No. And in fact, when under Barack Obama, when things were relaxed, listen, they weren't investing in the infrastructure they can. The reason they're so reliant on oil is because they haven't invested in wind farms. They haven't invested in solar panels, which, let's be honest, solar panels in Cuba are going to work. And they don't have gas. So they don't use gas. So it's always been very susceptible to world changes on oil. Now, the point being is they've got refineries and Venezuela was giving them it for free, or at least not for free, but for very, very cheap prices.

13:45In exchange, by the way, for some of their own military and security apparatus, a lot of which, for example, when Nicolás Maduro was taken from Venezuela, the people who died defending him were all human. So that was the way that that deal worked. Now, with that not in place, Cuba probably has no choice but to come to some sort of deal with the United States. But to what end? I don't know. Because they don't really have anything to give them, other than perhaps beachfronts, which isn't beyond the realms of possibility. Trump Tower Havana, you can see it happening, certainly. So amongst the kind of the ordinary Cubans that you're speaking to, who are they blaming for this?

14:26I was talking to one maths teacher who earns, I don't know, to$10 to$15 a month, whatever it is. He said, we had problems before, but it's never been like this. You've got a society that knows how to get by. It's just how it is. And as somebody said, you get scammed all the time in Cuba, but you're scammed with love because actually it's just a way to survive. That's gone now. They can't actually do the normal things that they did. and if you can't put petrol in any of your vehicles to get to the farms where your petrol driven vehicles haven't got enough petrol to go and do the farming, you're not producing any food.

15:08So you're entirely reliant on international handouts. Effectively, there's a blockade on everything. It's not just fuel. There's a lot of blockades going on. We were there, there was a supply of rice arrived at one of the government shops, but that has come from outside. We're not exactly certain which country it was, but it's not from Cuba. It is international aid relief. They're down to that, but they can't survive on that alone. But did you get the impression that the frustration, the anger, is metastasizing into something that could present a problem for the Cuban government? I didn't get that impression.

15:43There is definitely a lot of opposition, I suspect, very much like Iran, that President Trump thinks that's exactly what is likely to happen. But we didn't get that impression. Now, the young people we were working with, they're saving up cash as best they can from teaching jobs and working with us to try and get visas to leave. That is a real problem. So it's not about sort of taking up arms or going against the government, but most are saying it would just be better if we try to leave. Most, I got the impression, would love to stay, but they don't see a future. Do we think that the people have had enough of the government?

16:15And, you know, that probably will come, but the alternatives, I'm not quite sure because there is no opposition. I was talking to a relative of an opposition member of a party that wants to rise up. It's a non-starter and it's a very young man and I know for a fact he's left. So I don't think there's any chance of that changing. Do they blame the government for this? They blame the government for the way the country is, but they don't blame them for this time. This is since, if you like, January. They see it as a fundamentally different proposition to what was happening before. The deprivation that you have seen is of such a scale that I just find myself wondering, why no one's talking about Cuba?

16:55It's funny, isn't it? I mean, they do in Caribbean nations, yeah, but there's only so much influence they can have. But, you know, the Caribbean countries that have very close ties to the United Kingdom might expect something perhaps more from the UK. Could there be more from Spain? Could there be more from other countries? Many countries have been involved in Cuba over a very long period of time. They don't. I think it goes to a number of reasons, not least that is this revolutionary country that was quite happy to say, we're all right, Jack. And also, we are allied to Russia. And I think you will find that Cuba's natural inclination, apart from its links with Mexico, is also to look towards Russia and to Iran and to China.

17:41And that is why Trump's getting involved in it. That is what he wants, is for that to stop. And under the current blockade, unless those countries do more about it, and Russia has sent one ship, one ship has arrived this year, that'll take three of four weeks to refine and probably last 10 days, and that's it. Those are the countries that are, but there's so much going on. I think that they've all reached a point, okay, well, Cuba's another one, but we've got a bigger fish to fly with Iran. You know, it just goes on and on. Absent the sort of concerted international response that clearly neither you nor I believe is immediately forthcoming, what happens next?

18:19I suppose that they have to try to negotiate with Trump and assure him that the very, very close ties with China and Russia particularly could be coming to an end. However, they may also be looking and saying to China and Russia, we really need you to step this up. Never underestimate that we don't necessarily know what's going on in the background about deals. And that starts bringing in Iran, it starts bringing in Ukraine, and it can start bringing in Israel. All of these issues, I think there's more going on than necessarily meets the eye. Stuart, thanks very much indeed. Thanks very much for listening.

19:01And do remember to give the podcast a follow if you haven't already and you've liked what you've heard. Let us know your thoughts and ideas for future episodes. You can email me, why at sky.uk. We're going to be doing another one of your suggestions very soon indeed. This is why it's back again tomorrow.