World Tour: Running on empty

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LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: World Tour.

Cubans are running out of medical supplies, food is hard to come by, and gas is nearly impossible to get. The situation has been deteriorating for years…with increasing pressure coming on the communist country since January.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Cuba introduced some economic reforms this month… but experts say relief may still be far off.

WORLD’s Mary Muncy reports.

MARY MUNCY: A few weeks ago, First Hand Aid director Marc Bohland, handed medical supplies to a young Cuban doctor. The doctor then asked for a few more things, like a stethoscope:

BOHLAND: Just basic, basic stuff that, that he's been trying to, to get to keep his office–and it's a government office—keep his office afloat.

Some hospitals are closing because they don’t have power or medicine. Bohland saw pharmacies with nothing on the shelves.

BOHLAND: To be a physician and not have things at your fingertips to help people is frustrating

And that’s aside from just trying to survive. That doctor he delivered supplies to makes about $14 American dollars a month.

BOHLAND: Two pounds of beans is probably about $2 out of his 14 a month. And that's that's all the prices in Cuba right now. It's hard to live on what you make.

All of Cuba’s government offices are closed. No gas means almost non-existent public transportation and no garbage pickup. Piles of trash make some roads impassable.

Blackouts are getting longer, sometimes lasting days.

BOHLAND: And that doesn't just affect lights. That affects the water pumps in the city, so there is no water. It affects their refrigeration, so they can't buy food ahead because they don't want it to spoil. Certainly affects not being able to run a fan on your children when it's 100 and some degrees with high humidity.

Cuba started moving toward communism a century ago, fully embracing it in the 1960s. And between the support of the Soviet Union and then the rise of the tourism industry, Cuba remained functional.

But in 2020, tourism stopped, partially recovered, and then declined.

LEOGRANDE: Today, tourism is less than 25% of what it was.

William LeoGrande is a professor at American University specializing in Latin America.

LeoGrande thinks the U.S. has wanted to see a popular uprising since Fidel Castro took power in the 1960s. It enacted sanctions then, and recent escalations include enforcing an oil embargo in January after the removal of Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro. Then in May, the Trump administration threatened foreign companies, saying they would be banned from doing business in the US if they did business in Cuba.

The White House says it will allow goods and oil to flow to Cuba if the government opens its economy. This month, Cuba started allowing private banks, imports and exports without intermediation, and investment by Cubans abroad.

LeoGrande says it’s significant, but apparently not enough for US officials to remove the sanctions.

LEOGRANDE: Those reforms are not going to work without relief from these really draconian U.S. economic sanctions that are in place right now.

LeoGrande doubts the Cuban government will give up its national sovereignty in exchange for sanctions relief.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio addressed the Cuban people directly in a Spanish-language video message after they imposed the second round of sanctions.

RUBIO: (Speaking in Spanish) The reason you are forced to survive 22 hours a day without electricity is not due to an oil “blockade” by the U.S… the real reason you don’t have electricity, fuel, or food is because those who control your country have plundered billions of dollars but nothing has been used to help the people.

He says the reason there are blackouts is not because of the U.S. It's because the people in power have taken billions of dollars from Cubans and haven’t used it to help them.

RUBIO: (Spanish) and currently the only thing standing in the way of a better future are those who control your country.

He says the only thing standing in the way of a better future is those in power.

For their part, LeoGrande and non-profit director Bohland believe Cubans are unhappy with both the U.S. and their own government:

BOHLAND: You certainly hear them talk about it a lot. That something has to change. Something has to break in this day to day living situation.

But Bohland says that talk where it ends. The Cuban government has a history of suppressing dissidents, which makes a popular uprising unlikely.

LeoGrande:

LEOGRANDE: Most of them end up driven into exile or landing in prison.

LeoGrande and Bohland say any solution will take time. Meanwhile, ordinary Cuban people bear the consequences.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Mary Muncy.

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