In Santiago de Cuba, Adrián Silva Guerra squats over a crib. A headlamp hugs his temples, illuminating the cradle he is about to break apart. His three-year-old daughter slept here last night. But the family needs the wood to heat up their evening meal.
Before the total fuel blockade in January, 80% of Cubans used electric or gas stoves. Since then, cooking methods have been hurled back to the 19th century. The lucky few can afford charcoal. Adrián’s family isn’t so lucky.
The electrical grid collapsed three times in the first two weeks of July. 24-hour blackouts are becoming more frequent. Without fuel imports, the entire economy sputters and stalls.
US imperialism is systematically stamping out the economic basis of civilized life on the island. An entire people waste in agony as punishment for defying imperialism and freeing themselves from semicolonial subjugation 67 years ago.
A barbaric siege
Without diesel, agriculture grinds to a near halt. Tractors stand idle in the countryside while crops rot. Those who manage to handpick some of the harvest can’t transport it to town without fuel. State-owned food centers are faltering. Without transportation or refrigeration, humanitarian aid spoils on docks.
Streets are piled with garbage; there’s no fuel for collection. Some sift through bug-infested heaps looking for something to sell on the black market. Others who are more desperate look for scraps of food.
For nearly 60 years after the revolution, infant mortality rates were lower in Cuba than in the US. In the late 2000s, UNICEF declared child malnutrition abolished in Cuba. Every child under seven received a liter of milk a day to supplement their nutrition.
The first Trump administration imposed wide-ranging sanctions on Cuba in 2017. Biden kept them in place. The consequences? By 2025, infant mortality doubled. Between 2018 and 2023, Cuba’s pork production fell by 95%, rice by 87%, beans by 70%, and milk by 58%.
The US embargo was already wreaking havoc. However, as of this past January, more than 100,000 young children no longer receive their daily liter of milk. Food prices have surged by at least 20% this year.
Adrián’s family can no longer get rice, beans, eggs, or chicken. Instead of milk in the mornings, his wife tears a loaf of bread and swirls it in water with a mango-flavored powder. Some days, this “soft drink” is all some of them eat.
Cuba pumps 80% of its potable water from wells. Without electricity, many don’t have a reliable source of fresh water.
The power only comes on for two hours a day, if at all. Cubans have to prioritize how to use that fleeting time. Pump water or cook? Contact relatives or repair appliances? Either way, don’t forget to recharge spare batteries and devices to prepare for the day-long blackout ahead.
“His life depends on electricity”
Jorge Perez Álvarez is 21 years old. His lungs can’t pump oxygen on their own—he needs a ventilator to breathe. The machine’s spare battery is malfunctioning. The blackout has entered its 23rd hour. Jorge is gasping for air.
The New York Times describes the harrowing scene: “‘I don’t know how long we can keep going,’ said his mother, Xenia Álvarez, standing near her son’s crumpled body in his bedroom … ‘His life depends on electricity.’”
Despite the six-decade-long embargo, Cuba built a robust and free healthcare system. In 1959, average life expectancy in Cuba was 62 years. In 2025, it was 79.5, slightly higher than in the US. By the end of 2024, almost 26% of the population was 60 or older—a greater proportion than in most “high income” countries.
The fuel blockade has obliterated the healthcare system. 300 of the 395 essential medicines produced on the island are now unavailable, including antibiotics and anesthetics. Before January, the childhood cancer survival rate was 85%. It’s now down to 65%.
The blackouts disrupt procedures and damage diagnostic equipment. When power goes out mid-surgery, medical teams have no choice but to close the patients up as quickly as possible, and hope for the best.
100,000 Cubans are on surgery wait lists. In Havana, a city of two million, there is only one functional CT scanner. No diagnostics, surgeries, or medicine—a system-wide hemorrhage. Thousands of elderly and ailing people lay at home in unbearable pain, unable to get to a hospital.
Somewhere in Havana, Jorge is slowly asphyxiating. The US blockade is robbing him of oxygen, just as it is strangling the entire Cuban economy.
US workers can stop the blockade
Despite the endless barrage of the pro-gusano media, the American working class is tired of imperialist meddling abroad. A recent YouGov poll showed that 64% of Americans oppose military intervention in Cuba. A plurality of 46% oppose the fuel blockade.
Last year, a two million-strong general strike in Italy against the genocide in Gaza struck fear into the hearts of the ruling classes around the world. It showed the potential power the working class has to fight imperialism. If the American trade unions provided a similar lead, they could give a conscious and militant expression to the underlying anti-interventionist mood.
Workers have no interest in Cuba again becoming a playground for the Epstein class. It’s our duty to fight against US imperialism alongside our class brothers and sisters in Cuba.
US hands off Cuba! Lift the criminal blockade!
Defend the Cuban Revolution!
Down with US imperialism!