Cubans brace for aftershocks as US seizes more oil tankers
HAVANA—As US seizures of Venezuela-linked oil tankers surge, concerns grow in Cuba about whether the island’s government and economy will survive.
Experts warn that a sudden halt in Venezuelan oil shipments to Cuba could lead to widespread social unrest and mass migration following the stunning US military raid that resulted in the capture of former President Nicolás Maduro.
“I’d be lying if I told you that I don’t want to leave the country,” said 16-year-old Cuban student Amanda Gómez. “We’re all thinking about leaving, from the youngest to the oldest.”
Over the brink
Long before the Jan. 3 attack, severe blackouts were sidelining life in Cuba, where people endured long lines at gas stations and supermarkets amid the island’s worst economic crisis in decades.
The lack of Venezuelan oil could push Cuba over the brink, experts say.
“This will take an already dire situation to new extremes,” said Michael Galant, senior research and outreach associate at the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington. “This is what a collapsing economy looks like.”
Migration
Galant said he believes that’s the goal of the Trump administration: “to cause such an indiscriminate suffering in the civilian population as to instigate some sort of uprising, regime change.”
“This sort of besiegement of Cuba is very intentional. Will it work from their perspective? I think that the Cuban people have experienced suffering for a very long time, and the Cuban government is very well versed in how to handle these situations,” he said. “I think it’s very difficult to predict what will and will not spark actual regime instability. From the perspective of (US Secretary of State Marco) Rubio, it’s a sort of wait them out …. There’s always a breaking point.”
From 2020 to 2024, Cuba saw its population drop by 1.4 million, which experts largely attribute to migration spurred by the worsening crisis.
Juan Carlos Albizu-Campos, a Cuban economist and demographics expert, noted that while Cubans with means have already left, migration will continue.
“Fuel is a factor that affects everything,” he said. “People are going to feel that they are in worse conditions, and people who hadn’t considered leaving will feel the need to do so.”
At the Spanish Embassy in Havana on Friday, Ernesto Macías, a 53-year-old doctor, stood in line behind dozens of people to request a family member visa for his daughter, having already obtained his Spanish citizenship.
Falling GDP
“I wouldn’t want Cuba to be invaded or anything like that. I hope it doesn’t happen, but I’m sure people will continue to emigrate because there is no other way,” he said.
Cuba’s gross domestic product (GDP) has fallen 15 percent in the last six years, and President Miguel Díaz-Canel noted in December that there was a 4-percent decrease in 2025 alone.
Although the Cuban economy never fully recovered after the fall of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, it experienced relative prosperity between 2000 and 2019, fueled by a boom in tourism and exports of services, nickel, rum and tobacco.
Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and coupled with a radical increase in US sanctions under Trump’s second administration to pressure for political change—stifling every imaginable sector—Cuba’s crisis erupted with force.
Through it all, Cuba remained dependent on Venezuela for oil, receiving an estimated 35,000 barrels a day from the South American country before the United States attacked, along with some 5,500 barrels daily from Mexico and roughly 7,500 from Russia, according to Jorge Piñón, of the Energy Institute at the University of Texas in Austin, who tracks shipments using oil tracking services and satellite technology.
