It’s a crisis with no end in sight for Cuba, where daily life has become a struggle for survival as the island faces its most severe economic meltdown in more than six decades. The core of the catastrophe? A sharp decline in subsidized Venezuelan oil—Cuba’s lifeline for decades—brought on by a sweeping U.S. military buildup in the Caribbean and a partial blockade targeting oil tankers carrying about 70% of Venezuela’s crude. The result is a humanitarian disaster marked by hunger, disease, and a mass exodus of desperate Cubans.
On December 21, 2025, the situation reached a boiling point. The U.S. military, acting under orders from President Donald Trump, seized a tanker carrying almost two million barrels of Venezuelan oil destined for Cuba. According to The Wall Street Journal, this move was just the latest escalation in a broader campaign of pressure against Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro’s regime, which has long kept Cuba’s Communist government afloat with cheap oil. The U.S. has also conducted airstrikes on boats allegedly tied to Venezuelan drug trafficking, staged a major military buildup in the region, and threatened further action against the Maduro government.
This pressure campaign isn’t just about geopolitics. For ordinary Cubans, it’s existential. The collapse of Venezuelan oil shipments would be catastrophic, experts say. “It would be the collapse of the Cuban economy, no question about it,” Jorge Piñón, a Cuban exile who tracks the island’s energy ties to Venezuela at the University of Texas at Austin, told The Wall Street Journal.
Cuba’s dependence on Venezuelan oil is no secret. Since 1999, when then-President Hugo Chávez forged a close alliance with Havana—famously describing the two countries as bound together “in a sea of happiness”—Venezuela has supplied Cuba with up to 100,000 barrels of oil per day. In exchange, Cuba sent doctors, sports trainers, and intelligence agents to Venezuela, bolstering Chávez’s grip on power and later that of his successor, Maduro. Today, those shipments have dwindled to around 30,000 barrels a day, but they still account for about 40% of the oil Cuba needs to import to keep its power plants, transportation, and small businesses running.
But as Venezuela’s own economy has unraveled under Maduro, its ability to support Cuba has diminished. The U.S. blockade has only accelerated this decline. The Associated Press reported that on December 20, 2025, U.S. forces stopped another oil tanker, called Centuries, after it docked in Venezuela. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said the Coast Guard, with support from the War Department, conducted what an official described as a “consented boarding.” Venezuela’s government condemned the action as “criminal” and vowed to pursue legal complaints at the U.N. Security Council.
The impact on Cuba is devastating. The economy has contracted by 15% since 2018, according to Cuban economist Ricardo Torres Pérez, with cumulative inflation nearing 450% from 2018 to November 2025. The Cuban peso has collapsed on the black market, trading at about 450 per dollar compared to just 30 in 2020. Nearly 90% of Cubans now live in extreme poverty, and 70% go without at least one meal a day, according to the Social Rights Observatory, a think tank that polled Cubans this past summer.
Blackouts lasting 18 hours or more are common in some regions, forcing families to sleep outdoors in the sweltering heat. Public health is crumbling, with garbage piling up, water often unavailable for bathing or flushing toilets, and communicable diseases like chikungunya and dengue spreading rapidly. Many children are no longer able to attend school, and hospitals and other public institutions are barely functioning.
The crisis has triggered a mass exodus. More than 2.7 million people—about a quarter of the island’s population—have fled Cuba since 2020, many heading for the United States. “What Cuba is going through—a phenomenon I call demographic hollowing out—is nothing less than a humanitarian disaster only seen in countries in armed conflict,” Havana-based demographer Juan Carlos Albizu-Campos told The Wall Street Journal.
Inside Cuba, hope is in short supply. “It is really bleak and desperate,” said Ted Henken, a Cuba expert and professor at New York’s Baruch College. “Hope is gone, and people are desperate to get out.” Luis Robles, a former political prisoner who recently fled to Spain, described the situation for ordinary Cubans as “very hard.” He told The Wall Street Journal, “It’s very hard because there’s no food, there’s no medicines, there aren’t any public institutions that function as they should—hospitals, schools. It’s all a disaster.”
For those with relatives abroad who can send dollars, life is marginally more bearable. But for state employees, who earn just a few dollars a month, survival is “really unsustainable,” Robles said. The Social Rights Observatory found that 78% of Cubans intend to flee the island if they can.
The Cuban government, led by President Miguel Díaz-Canel, has acknowledged the gravity of the situation. “There is a huge material shortage in Cuba,” Díaz-Canel said in a December 2025 speech to the National Assembly. “We must assume the urgent need to advance toward macroeconomic stability…Without economic efficiency, sovereignty is not possible.”
Despite the desperation, the government has been reluctant to greatly expand the small private-business sector, a move some legislators see as necessary for recovery. Meanwhile, Cuban intelligence agents remain deeply embedded in Venezuela, working to ensure Maduro’s survival. As former U.S. diplomat Thomas A. Shannon Jr. put it, “The Cubans are not going to go quietly into the dark night.”
For Washington, the blockade is part of a broader strategy. President Trump has framed the campaign as a response to both drug trafficking and illegal migration, claiming to have ended 94% of seaborne drug trafficking to the U.S. and reduced illegal border crossings to zero before announcing the new measures against Venezuela. The crackdown on oil tankers, combined with military pressure and diplomatic isolation, is designed to weaken Maduro’s regime and, by extension, Cuba’s Communist leadership.
But for Cubans on the ground, these geopolitical maneuvers translate into empty shelves, empty stomachs, and empty streets as neighbors and relatives flee. “This is existential,” said Havana activist Manuel Cuesta Morua. “We’re just surviving day to day.”
As the blockade tightens and the oil lifeline frays, Cuba stands on the brink, with its people bearing the brunt of a crisis shaped by forces far beyond their control.
