Cubans, who often tune out when their leaders give speeches, were more than usually interested on Thursday when President Miguel Díaz-Canel addressed the nation on television following rumours that the Cuban government is talking with the Trump administration about ending one-party rule.
U.S. President Donald Trump said on Feb. 1 that talks are underway. “Cuba is a failing nation. It has been for a long time, but now it doesn’t have Venezuela to prop it up,” he said. “So we’re talking to the people from Cuba, the highest people in Cuba, to see what happens.”
On Thursday, Díaz-Canel merely said Cuba was “willing to engage in dialogue with the United States, a dialogue on any topic, but without pressure or preconditions.”
His tone had changed from six days before, when he accused Trump of “behaving like a Hitler, with a criminal policy of contempt, which has as a goal the takeover of the world.”
Díaz-Canel also promised that there would be improvements to the island’s catastrophic energy shortages in the next few weeks — a claim that provoked much skepticism from observers.
Blockade and blackouts
A Trump executive order of Jan. 29 placed new sanctions on countries that sell oil to Cuba, effectively blockading the fuel supply that powers the island’s disintegrating electrical grid. Most of Cuba’s oil came from Venezuela, but that source was cut off when the U.S. seized its president, Nicolás Maduro, and attacked the capital last month.
Cuba’s electrical grid is in desperate condition, and daily power cuts were standard for many Cubans even before the oil blockade.
The country can produce about 30 per cent of the oil it needs, but it is heavy and sulphurous, and its use has damaged generating stations that are already far past their intended lifespans. Efforts to introduce solar power have had limited success due to lack of batteries.
Eloy Viera, a Cuban Canadian who co-ordinates the Cuban affairs publication El Toque, expressed skepticism about Díaz-Canel’s promises that the energy situation would improve in the coming weeks.
“My family who live in Cienfuegos in central Cuba have 50 or 60 hours without electricity and then they receive a service of four to five hours, and then again a new blackout of 40 to 50 hours,” he said.
The new energy crisis came as Cuba experienced an unprecedented cold spell, with freezing temperatures recorded on the island for the first time ever.
Oil analysts believe the island has only weeks of remaining fuel supplies, even with the rolling blackouts the government has implemented and the suspension of public transit reported in many places.
Mexico had initially stepped up to replace supplies that used to come from Venezuela, but state oil company Pemex changed its mind on Jan. 26. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum was forced to deny that Mexico had changed course under pressure from the Trump administration, as widely reported.
Conditions are so dire that Viera said he believes there could be mass protests like those in July 2021, which were severely repressed by communist authorities.
“And I’m pretty sure that the answer is going to be the use of force, because that’s what they have right now. We could see a scenario similar to what we’ve seen in Iran.”
Cuba’s electrical grid suffered a partial collapse early Wednesday, leaving the capital Havana and much of western Cuba in the dark. Amid an energy crisis, many parts of the country have been experiencing daily blackouts that last 20 hours or more.
Cuban Canadian Michael Lima Cuadra of rights group Democratic Spaces shares the concern that Cuba could slip into violence.
The regime’s biggest fear, he said, is not Washington. “The biggest threat is the Cuban people. They’ve always feared that people would take to the streets and demand democracy. Yes, they view the U.S. as a threat. But democratic change is the real fear.”
Possible secret meetings in Mexico
Reports that Alejandro Castro Espín was already talking directly to the CIA in Mexico caused much excitement this week, but also some skepticism.
Castro Espín is the son of Raúl Castro — Fidel’s brother, a former president and the man generally believed to hold real power in Cuba — and revolutionary heroine Vilma Espín. He holds the rank of brigadier-general in the Cuban army.
He was also involved in secret talks with the Obama administration 12 years ago that led to a short-lived thaw in relations.
Cubans see Castro Espín as part of the less visible, but more influential, wing of communist rule.
“In Cuba,” said Buenos Aires-based Cuban lawyer Alain Espinoza of rights group Cubalex, “power has always been divided between those who show their faces, such as Díaz-Canel and the Council of State, and those who control the Cuban economy behind the curtain, such as Alejandro Castro Espín — and behind him large economic concerns, including the military-owned holding company GAESA, who are the ones who control all the money and economy of Cuba.”
Espinoza said he doesn’t believe the regime as a whole would ever agree to leave power, but “we can’t rule out the possibility that those who control the Cuban economy might be willing to negotiate an exit that allows them to keep some of the fortune they have amassed, without having to fear legal repercussions or criminal prosecution.”
The deal that might emerge from such talks could strongly resemble the deal with Delcy Rodríguez, now Venezuela’s acting president, where some elements within the regime turn against others in order to secure better terms for themselves from Washington.
But many Cubans are skeptical.
Cubans doubt regime will release its hold
Viera noted that Díaz-Canel did not repeat the Cuban Foreign Affairs Ministry’s statement of a few days before, which emphasized Cuba’s “red lines” with Washington. Instead, the president said he was ready to discuss “substantial” matters. However, Viera doubted that would include giving up power.
“I think that’s the principle that the United States wants to negotiate with them. But they’re not thinking of negotiating that because it’s their survival that’s at stake right now,” Viera told CBC News.
“They know they have a very short time window. They know that in November, the Republican Party is going to face new elections that may change Congress,” he said.
“They will try to survive for six, seven months, trying to reduce every expense, to put on the shoulders of the people every burden they can, because what they want right now is to do what they have been doing for 67 years: buy time. That has been their policy, surviving one day after the other.”
Comparisons with Venezuela
Some Cuban dissidents and analysts said they weren’t convinced by the reports of talks with the CIA in Mexico.
If talks do happen, many Cubans worry that the U.S. will merely demand changes from the existing regime, rather than actual regime change.
When Venezuelan leader Maduro was spirited away to a U.S. prison cell, his vice-president, Delcy Rodríguez, was permitted to take his place, apparently indefinitely. That outcome disappointed many Venezuelans, who were hoping the U.S. would demand that the opposition’s victory in the 2024 elections be respected, or demand new multiparty elections.
“A fraction of the elite might step aside and look for some sort of deal with the United States,” said former Cuban diplomat and party member Juan Antonio Blanco, now head of Madrid-based pro-democracy group Cuba Siglo 21. Blanco suspects the Trump administration has another Rodríguez-type solution in mind for his homeland.
“I’m sure that they’re trying. I mean, that would be absolutely normal for the United States to do.”
LIBERTAD Act lays down the law
But unlike the case of Venezuela, Blanco said, no U.S. president is at liberty to freelance a transition to democracy in Cuba. That’s because the steps any such transition must follow are already spelled out in detail in the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity (LIBERTAD) Act of 1996, commonly known as the Helms-Burton Act.
“It says that if there is a transition government in Cuba — it doesn’t matter if it comes from Mars or from an American invasion or from the Cuban government or part of the government or the opposition that knocked out the government — any transition government would have to immediately establish civil and political rights.”
The law also ordains that free elections must be held within 18 months of the start of the transition.
In Venezuela, Trump has said elections are “years” away, falsely claiming that the country is incapable of holding any. (Venezuela has a proven track record of holding orderly elections; the problem has been the socialist government’s unwillingness to respect the results.)
Hope and trepidation for the future
Cuban dissidents from different political currents share the same concerns about the future: a fear of violence and score-settling, the worry that impoverished Cubans could become an underclass in their own country if wealthy exiles return and, most recently, unease that Washington might seek a compromise solution in Havana that leaves the dictatorship in control.
“I think we all have the same doubts,” Cuban lawyer Espinoza said. “Everyone is unhappy that a part of that Chavista elite, that did so much harm to the Venezuelan people, is able to perpetuate itself in power with impunity. Nobody is going to be happy with that kind of transition [in Cuba].”
Lima Cuadra, of rights group Democratic Spaces, said events in Venezuela have caused disillusionment. “The U.S. solution in Venezuela has been called ‘regime management’ instead of regime change. For transition to be successful, you have to remove all the elements from the old regime, those people from state security that tend to create mafias and be an obstacle for democracy.”
“The U.S. has to listen to what Cuban democracy fighters in the islands are asking for, what Cubans in exile in the U.S. and in other parts of the world are asking. Free elections have to be on the table.”
And Lima Cuadra said there’s no reason for other countries to accept that Cuba’s future is only a concern for Washington.
“Canada also has diplomatic tools that it can use — the same diplomatic tools Canada uses for Iran, for Venezuela, for Belarus, like targeted sanctions. And Canada is not doing that. It’s still on the same old policy of silence and inaction.”