The Cuban sociopolitical system's ability to withstand being the target of the most comprehensive sanctions regime Washington imposes anywhere in the world was due, in large part, to Soviet support until 1990 and, later, to the almost providential emergence of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, a horse Fidel Castro bet on and backed successfully.
Looking at what has happened in 2026, sanctions may appear almost secondary before this point in history, but that would be a gross error. Since 2019, during Trump's first administration, the poisoned darts launched from the White House, the State Department, and OFAC have become far more precise and destructive. The chokehold aimed at suffocating the Cuban economy has tightened beyond anything seen before, while the obstacles, pressure campaigns, and penalties imposed on foreign partners connected to Cuba have grown far harsher.
Thus, the escalation initiated by Trump more than seven years ago, and pushed into uncharted territory this year following Maduro's removal from power in Venezuela, has become extraordinarily aggressive and all-encompassing. The reality depicted by the Associated Press in this wire from today, where an ever-growing number of Cubans struggle merely to survive, simply did not exist in this form. I don't understand Rubio's "argument" that the problem is that the Cuban state has always sought to keep people dependent on it.
Ultimately, and of course there is a deeper philosophical debate here between two mutually exclusive social and political systems, the issue is that my university used to be full of students attending classes in person. Today, they can only do so for a single month during the entire academic year. Even that became possible only after the university arranged a long-distance barter agreement with a private small business. In exchange for leasing out unused storage facilities, the university receives fuel.
The people you see in the AP video that runs here, sleeping on the ground overnight in order to receive charity in the form of a small serving of split-pea stew, would not be carrying such an overwhelming burden of misery. Contending with rising prices in the face of runaway inflation, especially after the state lost its dominant position --for bad so far-- as the principal supplier of goods and services to a growing private sector, was already a daunting, almost Herculean task. But, again, it was not anything like this.
Washington may care only about the expansion of Cuba's private sector, regardless of how many people are actually able to improve their lives through it. So the second Trump administration is pursuing regime change without any apparent regard for the social cost of the experiment: widespread material hardship and a growing sense of psychological disorientation.
So if Cubans already had a hard time dealing with domestic problems, problems that, in fairness, are hardly unique to Cuba since every country struggles with some degree of governmental mismanagement, then what has all of this been for?
Source for the cover image.