Cuba After Maduro’s Ouster Braces for Blackouts, Hunger, and Hope

From Havana’s blackouts to Santiago de Cuba’s exile songs, Cubans are treating Nicolás Maduro’s fall as a defining forecast. With Venezuela’s vital oil lifeline under threat, Miguel Díaz-Canel’s government faces the mounting pressure of an economy in crisis and families already surviving on rations.

Survival In Havana Goes Public

In Havana, elderly Cubans are digging through garbage for scraps of food. Trash piles up, blackouts stretch, and the stifling heat turns missing services, water, power, and medicine into something you feel in the body.

In Santiago de Cuba, gatherings feature music by exiles, including Gloria Estefan and Willy Chirino. Chirino’s lyric, “Our day is coming soon,” is often perceived as a direct challenge to the status quo.

This sense of challenge intensified after the United States ousted Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela. Cuba, home to under 10 million people, relies on Venezuelan oil to sustain its economy. This development ushers in a highly uncertain period reminiscent of the “special period” following the Soviet collapse.

In Latin America, petro-politics often decide budgets and loyalties; today, Cuba feels that dependence without any real safety net.

The exclusive interviews and quotes cited here were published by The Wall Street Journal and reported by Deborah Acosta and José de Córdoba. In poorer cities, Cubans speculate about whether Washington will try to topple Miguel Díaz-Canel, successor to Raúl Castro and Fidel Castro, the brothers who led the 1959 revolution. “They are nervous,” said Manuel Cuesta Morúa in Havana. “Repression will increase; it’s the typical response.”

For Reynaldo Flores, politics arrives through the faucet. Two days after Maduro’s ouster, the 66-year-old retiree had gone five consecutive days without running water in Havana. “Six, seven, 10 days go by with no water,” he said. “Then when the water returns, there’s no electricity to pump it in.” He stores water and climbs onto rooftops to collect buckets when it runs out. What terrifies him most is the elderly searching through trash and then dying in overwhelmed hospitals. “One of my friends works for the government and was just tasked with picking up elderly people who live alone, who’d been dead in their homes for days,” he said.

Oil Math and Empty Hotel Lobbies

Since 2020, more than 2.7 million people, about a quarter of the population, mostly young, have fled Cuba, most to the United States, the newspaper reported. Demographer Juan Carlos Albizu-Campos called it “demographic hollowing out” and estimated the population is now eight million. He said emigration and lower fertility have pushed live births below levels seen in 1899.

“Cuba’s problem was already existential,” Joe García, a former Cuban-American congressman who speaks often with senior island officials, told the newspaper. “On the Cuban side, it’s desperation and worse desperation.” Tourism used to cushion the blow, but industry executives said hotel occupancy is below 30%. Many visitors, often from Russia and China, arrive on all-inclusive packages that keep spending inside pre-approved itineraries.

In Havana’s Vedado district, a new 42-story luxury hotel rises above the neighborhood. The $200 million Spanish-run property is “nearly empty,” said William LeoGrande of American University, who estimated hard-currency income from tourism is down 75%. He said hardship now falls hardest on poorer Cubans without relatives abroad, while those with access to dollars are less exposed, an inequality that can harden into resentment.

Oil is the most unforgiving variable. Jorge R. Piñon of the University of Texas said Venezuela provides about 35,000 barrels of oil a day, of the roughly 100,000 Cuba needs. The island produces about 40,000 barrels a day; Mexico has reduced shipments from about 22,000 barrels a day last year to around 7,000, while Russia sends about 10,000. “I would not be surprised if the Americans tell Venezuela to continue giving oil to Cuba, so as not to open another Pandora’s box,” he said. Without Venezuelan oil, he estimates Cuba’s energy infrastructure would collapse within 30 days.

The Regime Tightens as The Island Thins Out

The government’s reflex has been discipline. After Maduro’s capture, workers were required to attend a rally denouncing it, and the regime declared two days of mourning, flags at half-staff honoring 32 Cuban soldiers and high-ranking military intelligence officers killed during the U.S. incursion, the newspaper reported.

Blackouts now leave residents with just four hours of electricity daily. Without fuel, generators sit idle, forcing households to use petroleum-run stoves for cooking.

Between the exile songs of Santiago de Cuba and the rooftop water runs of Havana, Cuba now faces the test of whether its people can endure as the essentials of survival slip away. Maduro’s ouster has thrown the country into a new era, sharpening Cuba’s existential crisis and demanding both resilience and clarity about its future.

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