US Blockade Takes Cuba to the Edge

Latin America Correspondent Jon Bonfiglio speaks to Carole Walker for Times Radio, + Extras.

Transcript

Carole Walker: 0:00

Now it's been reported that the situation in Cuba is reaching crisis point along with hyperinflation. The lack of oil has led to rubbish and rotten food piling up on the street corners of the capital Havana. It follows an executive order signed by President Trump in January, imposing tariffs on any country supplying Cuba with oil. Despite outrage from Cuba's traditional allies, China and Russia, the threat has proved effective. Well, let's talk to Latin American correspondent Jon Bonfiglio. Good evening to you, Jon. Really good to have you with us. Just explain exactly what's happening in Cuba.

Jon Bonfiglio: 0:40

Well, um, I mean, fundamentally, there is no oil flowing into the country. Cuba produces none itself, so the supplies are dwindling. Of course, this means no fuel, but it also manifests in a variety of ways, which are, I mean, lead to a kind of a uh civic breakdown. Um, perhaps the most tangible of these, as you say, is Cuba's waste crisis right across the country's cities and towns. Refugees has now been building up on the streets, and I saw no doubt, but equally, it has other implications beyond that. Um, it's already leading to a public health crisis for a country which once had a health system that was the envy of the world, and is now that the health system is now collapsed, and its fuel um dependent electrical grid, long crumbling due to a lack of investment, has no fuel to run on. Uh, much of the island now has regular power cuts. At best, zero electricity. Uh at worst, it is uh it is a country undoubtedly that has lost all of its uh all of its historical pillars of strength that it based its its economy on, its society on, and its uh sort of political strength on. And I think it is better to say it's teaching.

Carole Walker: 1:51

Uh uh sorry to interrupt you, Jon. Just to be clear, then, it it is because President Trump um has basically blocked oil supplies and uh announced big tariffs on any country that does supply them. So oil supplies have dried up. So that that just simply means that there's no power supplies. How does that affect things like uh the rubbish, the availability of um basic products in the stores and so on?

Jon Bonfiglio: 2:17

Yeah, I mean absolutely as you say, so even although there is political infrastructure still in place, that political infrastructure does not have any fuel with which to engage its its its operating systems. Um and uh it is I mean it's also important to remember that this isn't just some these a blockade which has just emerged on a country which was doing plenty well before it arrived. I mean, it is still suffering from uh from uh the the COVID pandemic, which much of Latin America, much of the world continues to sort of try and emerge its economies from, and and never really recovered as a result of um of the sort of the special period when the Soviet Union broke down at the end of the 90s. So ever since then, it's been living crisis after crisis after crisis. You multiplied that by the current blockade, and it is, I think it's fair to say, living it is its worst period, its most complex period since the revolution of 1959. And I say this, I don't say that lightly, I say this full in the knowledge that Cuba is accustomed to these kinds of crises.

Carole Walker: 3:14

And of course, uh for years we've seen um people trying to flee the country. Uh Marco Rubio has talked about wanting to try to resolve this. How does he think that this blockade is is going to work, or what does he think? What is the strategy behind it?

Jon Bonfiglio: 3:32

Well, the strategy is that this is a collective punishment to force the end of the Cuban Revolution. So, what the Trump administration, specifically Marco Rubio, for whom this is personal given he has Cuban parents who who who fled the um or who left the the country in in the 50s, for them the strategy is to attempt to to generate a situation a little bit like in Venezuela, where individuals uh around the sort of the top tier, the leaders of the Cuban Communist Party, uh turn on them and sell them down the river and bring about regime change from within.

Carole Walker: 4:04

And is there any indication that that might work? I mean, it it it's obviously difficult to report from inside Cuba. There are very few journalists actually there. But is there a sense in which the people of Cuba might blame their own government, or are they simply blaming the White House?

Jon Bonfiglio: 4:23

I mean, I think people in Cuba can think both things at the at one at the same time. As regards the um uh whether anybody will turn uh on the Cuban uh leadership, I think it's it would be you would misunderstand Cuba to assume that it is just an extension of the Venezuelan context. Venezuela obviously was under a dictatorship for, I mean, depending on your understanding of the situation between 10 and and 20 years, but there was an opposition. There were, even if there weren't legal elections, um, there weren't bona fide elections, there were elections that took place. None of that is the case in Cuba, which has had a which has been a single party state with no opposition, no demonstrations to speak of uh since 1959.

Carole Walker: 5:05

And we'll have to leave it there because we're out of time. But Jon Bonfiglio uh from Latin America, great to have you with us as ever. Thank you so much.

Jon Bonfiglio: 5:15

Just uh as we sort of run out of time a little bit there, just a couple of things to add to that interview with with Carol e Walker. Yes, undoubtedly there is no oil coming in, or very little oil coming in from Venezuela or or anywhere else. There is no Russian or Chinese support, no tourism, no foreign reserves. But worst of all, there is, as I've said many times before, and regular listeners will know, there's no longer any belief in Cuba, in the notion of Cuba, in the Cuban experiment among Cubans. Whatever historically was thrown to Cuba, its people always had this underlying, or at least the people that remain in Cuba always had this underlying belief in Cuba's moral imperative. No longer. And the current context, um I mean, we can talk sort of big picture stuff, but it is a kind of fraught safety net free context in which things start to happen. There was a major fire at one of the island's most important refineries a couple of days ago. Airlines are now cancelling flights due to an absence of aviation fuel on the island, and Havana's major annual cigar festival finding itself unable to operate in these straightened circumstances has cancelled its entire event. And when cigar events in Cuba are cancelled, you know that something's up.