Cuban-Americans in Miami, long accustomed to toasting a distant hope of returning to a free Cuba, are newly energized by the US capture of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro and signs that the Trump administration may next target Havana’s communist leadership. Cuba is more vulnerable than it has been in decades, battered by economic collapse, chronic power outages, food shortages, and a drastic reduction in Venezuelan oil supplies that once sustained the island, The Economist reports. The downfall of Maduro threatens to further isolate Cuba, potentially cutting off its most critical energy lifeline and weakening its security ties. While exile communities sense a rare moment of possibility, Cuba’s leaders appear deeply anxious, relying increasingly on Russia as a last external backer. Yet, after more than 60 years of enduring hardship, many Cubans remain skeptical that the crisis alone will finally bring political change. They write:
It is traditional at the turn of the year for Cuban-Americans in Miami to gather around a pig roast and toast “Next year in Havana”. This started in 1959 after Fidel Castro, a communist revolutionary, seized power in Cuba and drove many of its people into exile. Then, the toast reflected recent emigrants’ earnest desire to return, and their belief that Castro would soon fall, allowing them to do so. As time proved Castro’s regime to be incredibly resilient, the toast’s hope decayed into wistfulness.
This year is different. As Miami’s other large group of exiles, Venezuelans, took to the streets to celebrate the capture of their country’s dictator, Nicolás Maduro, by American forces during an extraordinary nighttime raid on January 3rd, the Cuban diaspora was cheering, too. They hope that the men who have made their country miserable, prompting the recent emigration of a quarter of the country’s population, may be next on Donald Trump’s list of problems in his hemisphere that he is willing to solve by force. […]
The excitement is fuelled not just by the fact of Mr Maduro’s capture, but by strong suggestions from the Trump administration that Cuba could be next. […]
Cuba’s main concern is oil. Ms Rodríguez is also Venezuela’s energy minister. Although she is ostensibly ideologically aligned with Cuba, diplomats say she was running out of patience with Cuba’s lack of gratitude—and inability to pay—for its cheap fuel. If Venezuela cuts off its supply of oil to Cuba, “it is difficult to imagine a foreign ally filling that void,” said Ricardo Torres, a Cuban-born economist at American University in Washington. […]
Neither Russia nor Iran seems likely to fill the oil gap. Russia, though, is probably Cuba’s best hope for a lifeline more generally. […]
But hope, it seems, never died. “Here we swim in this very thick soup of nostalgia,” said Joe Garcia, a Miami-born Cuban-American former member of the United States Congress. “We carry the idea of some kind of justice in the end, that communism didn’t triumph, that we never gave up the fight, that people are still trying to figure out a way to bring freedom back to Cuba.”
Read more here.
