Life in Cuba under pressure from the Trump campaign: no electricity, no oil, and impossible choices

Now Trump has announced that those shipments will stop. Cut off from its main source of crude oil, Cuba finds itself exposed, a circumstance that the US president wants to take advantage of when he decrees the death of Castroism. He also decided to impose Definitions On other countries that supply Cuba with oil, seeking to increase its isolation in order to force negotiations.

The last ship carrying crude oil from Venezuela arrived in December 2025, carrying 598,000 barrels. This oil, plus 84,900 barrels sent by Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex) a week after Maduro’s arrest, is all the regime has to survive the coming weeks. The regime was counting on Mexico’s support, but after pressure from Trump, President Claudia Sheinbaum promised, for the time being, food and medicine but not crude oil.

According to consulting firm Kpler, Cuba’s oil reserves are in critical condition. Imported crude oil is essential to the electrical and transportation system and thus the economy. It seems that the Cuban leadership has no other alternative but to choose between negotiating with Trump to lift the blockade or pushing the country into economic paralysis.

Food or the Internet

One issue that will be at the forefront, if the Cuban regime finally sits down with Trump to negotiate a way out of its current situation, will be internet access, a major concern for government opponents.

The Trump administration expected this in June 2025 Fact sheetHe announced an increase in restrictions on the island and an intensification of “efforts to support the Cuban people by expanding Internet services, a free press, free enterprise, freedom of association, and legal travel.”

In 2015, when Internet services began to expand in Cuba, many Cubans gained access to the web for the first time in their lives, and the impact was profound. The regime has lost its monopoly on information that had existed for years. As the country’s only legal political party, the Communist Party has been able to construct the country’s narrative as it sees fit through its media. The emergence of social media, where activists, artists, and opponents of the regime were able to share their work and messages, coupled with the emergence of independent media, empowered a dissident civil society that had long struggled to have its voice heard.

Six years later, in 2021, opposition to the regime was strong enough to attempt to change the status quo in the country through calls for an end to repression and human rights violations. Citizens took to the streets in almost every city. They demanded freedom, an end to dictatorship, and a new beginning for the nation. The regime responded with violence: one death, more than a thousand political prisoners, and the forced exile of others. Finally, it tightened surveillance and access to the Internet, which was essential to the opposition movement.

Since then, Castroism has increasingly focused on controlling the Internet as it tightened the screws of repression to prevent another uprising.