Cuba after Venezuela? Will US blockade topple Havana's 67-year Communist rule
India Today
The Communist regime of Cuba is facing its gravest test in decades. Following the US blockade, the sanctions-battered nation is facing acute food and fuel shortages and blackouts. Everything is converging into a big crisis. As the Trump administration tightens the screws, will Cuba's Communist regime fall like it did in Venezuela?
Cuba is teetering on the brink of a full-blown financial and humanitarian crisis. Food shortages are mounting. There's severe electricity rationing. Hours-long blackouts have disrupted the daily lives in the Communist-ruled island nation of 11 million. Oil and food supplies can't reach the Communist country due to an American blockade. This is the toughest test for the Communist regime that Fidel Castro brought to power in 1959. Amid the American blockade, Cuba's Deputy Prime Minister Oscar Perez-Oliva Fraga insisted that the nation would "overcome" and not "collapse", even as supplies dwindled dangerously low.
This dire situation did not emerge overnight. It follows the US's military capture of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on January 3. The regime in Venezuela had been severing the oil lifeline that Cuba depended on to keep its economy running. Determined to make America great again, the Americas, especially Cuba, are on Trump's radar.
Through the US's intense pressure and sweeping sanctions, combined with the loss of Venezuelan oil supplies, Havana's economy has visibly been squeezed to the edge. Cuba on Monday warned airlines that it was suspending jet fuel supplies for a month, reported news agency AFP.
Together, these factors have pushed Cuba's 67-year-old Communist regime into its most precarious moment since the 1959 revolution that brought Castro to power. This blockade may be the reason the regime, which has long been a recipient of American ire, now faces a genuine threat of collapse, feel many.
The United Nations said on Wednesday that the humanitarian situation in Cuba is "extremely concerning". The situation could worsen, or even collapse, if oil needs aren't met, it said. A street vendor in Cuba's Havana moves past a poster of Che Guevara, an icon of the Communist revolution. Cuba is facing its worst economic crisis since the fall of the USSR in the early 1990s. (Image: AFP)
Cuba's economy is reeling under a tightening energy squeeze that has strained everyday lives on the island. British newspaper, The Financial Times, on January 29 reported that oil stocks in Cuba were then estimated to last as little as 15 to 20 days. In the capital Havana, blackouts have recently skyrocketed to 12 hours or 15 hours a day, reported the US-based Quantum Commodity Intelligence, a portal on world trade. This has disrupted the functioning of hospitals, transit, water systems and food refrigeration.
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