Cuba is facing a deepening political and economic crisis,fueled by severe fuel shortages and dwindling international support. The situation has prompted increasingly dire predictions from U.S.officials, including assessments that the island nation is on the verge of collapse, and is further complicated by the potential cessation of crucial oil shipments from Mexico. As the cuban government grapples with widespread power outages, a collapsing economy, and a growing humanitarian crisis-highlighted by desperate crowdfunding efforts to provide essential medical equipment-the future of the Communist regime remains uncertain.
Cuba is facing a deepening crisis as dwindling fuel supplies threaten to overwhelm the island nation, prompting concerns about the stability of the current government. The situation has drawn attention from Washington, with U.S. officials suggesting the country is on the brink of collapse. The potential disruption of oil shipments from Mexico adds another layer of complexity to an already precarious situation.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently described Cuba as “a disaster, run by senile incompetents, with its economy in total collapse,” speaking after a reported operation in Venezuela. “So, yes… if I lived in Havana and was in the government, I would be worried,” he added. A key initial action following a change in leadership in Caracas was the cessation of Venezuelan oil deliveries to Cuba.
Former U.S. President Donald Trump stated in January 2024 that “Cuba is about to fall,” asserting that military intervention would not be necessary. He reiterated this assessment on January 27, 2026. The possibility of Mexico also halting oil shipments to Cuba further complicates matters. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said on January 27, 2026, that any such decision would be a “sovereign decision,” without confirming whether it had been made, though she acknowledged potential pressure from the United States.
“The Difference Between a Hard Rationing and a Suffocating One”
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Cutting off oil supplies from Mexico would remove one of the few remaining sources sustaining daily life in Cuba, particularly after the reduction in Venezuelan shipments, according to Omar Rachedi, an economics professor at Esade Business School. “Mexico has been sending crude oil and fuels since 2023, and between January and September 2025, those shipments totaled around 17,200 barrels of crude oil and 2,000 of refined products per day,” he explained.
Rachedi estimates Cuba’s daily oil needs at approximately 125,000 barrels. In 2025, the island imported around 45,700 barrels daily, significantly below its requirements, with 27,400 coming from Venezuela. He confirmed via email that while Mexican oil imports haven’t resolved the energy crisis, “they marked the difference between a hard rationing and a directly suffocating one.”
Economic Strangulation, for the Regime and the Population
Antonio López Vega, a professor of International Studies at ITAM in Mexico, believes the situation on the island was already precarious, but that the arrival of oil had allowed the regime to persist in recent years. “In this sense, the end of that oil supply to the island means, I believe, as most analysts do, the total strangulation of the regime,” he concluded.
“So, the question here isn’t what that supply cut will entail, but how the end of the regime will be managed,” López Vega predicted, dismissing the possibility of a U.S. military operation similar to the one in Venezuela. “That outcome doesn’t seem likely on the island,” said the also director for Latin America of the Ortega-Marañón Foundation.
The economic strangulation described by analysts often translates to widespread power outages and the inability to cook or use appliances for much of the day. In some cases, the consequences are even more dire. A crowdfunding campaign is currently raising money to purchase generators for Valentina, Milena, and Yeilín, three girls who rely on respirators and electricity to survive. The campaign aims to allow them to leave the hospital and return home.
“What the population is suffering the most right now is the issue of blackouts,” said Cuban economist Omar Everleny Pérez. Speaking from Havana, he explained that the island is currently facing multiple simultaneous crises, including an energy crisis, a health crisis with an epidemic of dengue and other tropical diseases, a transportation crisis, and a supply crisis. “In the middle of all this, there’s a crisis of domestic fuel, the so-called ‘gas balita’ in Cuba: people don’t have anything to cook with,” he added. Neither gas, electricity, nor coal are readily available in most cities.
Filling up vehicles is also difficult. Everleny Pérez was scheduled to fill his car on January 5, but “there are still three thousand vehicles ahead of me.” Paying in dollars is another option, but even then, lines stretch for three or four blocks. “The impact on private transportation is already being felt, and as a result, taxi prices have doubled, and purchasing power continues to deteriorate… because as scarcity increases, so does inflation, and people are feeling the squeeze.”
The Biggest Problem: Lack of Foreign Exchange
“When fuel is lacking, power generation shuts down, production slows, and it becomes even more difficult to earn the foreign income needed to import what’s missing,” said Rachedi, also a senior researcher at Esade’s Global and Geopolitical Economy center. The Cuban government has for decades blamed the U.S. trade embargo for its economic problems. “It has had a real effect, but it doesn’t function as a wall that automatically prevents oil from arriving from any country,” he explained.
“Its main impact has been to make the operation more expensive and complicated, but not to prohibit or prevent it entirely. “The problem is that this type of ‘exception’ makes the system dependent on few suppliers and leaves it extremely vulnerable when one fails,” he noted. “In the short term, complete alternatives aren’t easy to see: buying on the international market requires foreign exchange and expensive logistics, and Cuba is entering this moment with little financial margin,” he said.
Everleny agrees: “Cuba, with money, could get a ship with oil from any destination tomorrow. But the problem is that it doesn’t have the money to pay for it.” “The main problem is the lack of foreign exchange, and this is due to the decline of its main export sectors, the first of which is tourism,” he explained. Nickel production has also declined.
The economist pointed out that there are more than a thousand Cuban doctors in Mexico, for whom the Mexican government must pay Cuba. In the cases of Venezuela and Mexico, the supply of oil to the island “was related to income that Cuba had in those two countries.” If Mexico also stops that supply, Cuba will have a very difficult time finding other suppliers, with Russia facing its own energy crisis and Iran confronting its own problems.
Sheinbaum at a Crossroads
However, Everleny doesn’t believe Mexican oil will necessarily stop flowing to Cuba. “That’s not what the president said. The president said that the shipment that was going to be received this month won’t arrive in Cuba. She didn’t say that no more shipments would arrive,” he emphasized. In fact, Claudia Sheinbaum addressed the issue again on January 28, 2026. “Humanitarian aid to Cuba, like to other countries, continues because it is humanitarian aid and Mexico has always been in solidarity with everyone. These are sovereign decisions,” she said at her daily press conference. She added that Mexico “will determine whether to include the shipment of crude oil within that humanitarian aid.”
Sheinbaum is now facing the dilemma of continuing to help Cuba or yielding to U.S. pressure. “Within the Morena party, Sheinbaum’s party, there are prominent leaders inclined to maintain cooperation with Cuba as much as possible,” explained López Vega from Mexico City.
He believes Washington won’t reduce the pressure. On one hand, due to the presence of Marco Rubio “as a strongman in Trump’s circle.” And on the other, because “there are midterm elections in the United States this year, and in that scenario, Florida is obviously not just any state.” “The Cuban exile community has been instrumental in the successes of Donald Trump and will play a very relevant role in these elections,” he explained.
Rachedi doesn’t rule out that “Mexico will resume part of the shipments or that occasional shipments will come from other partners, enough to avoid a total collapse.” “The really dangerous scenario is a prolonged cut without replacement, because that’s when the crisis stops being ‘just’ electrical and becomes a general crisis of supply and governability,” he added. And that’s precisely what Trump meant when he said that “Cuba is about to fall.”
(rml)
