During the World Cup final on July 19, the handful of restaurants with electricity in the heart of Old Havana managed to screen the match for small crowds of Cubans who, cheering for Spain, tried for a couple of hours to forget the hardships of the seemingly endless blackouts.
When Donald Trump appeared on the screen, several voices rose from the crowd: “Come and free us, Donald.”
Someone laughed under their breath. Others began to applaud, only to stop almost immediately. A couple of police officers pretended not to notice. In another era, a gesture like that would have been enough to earn someone a night in a cell.
Three months after that “unprecedented” episode—which is still recounted with astonishment through a wry kind of word of mouth—Cuba looks like a country at war.
No bombs are falling on Havana. But perhaps it would be better if they were: at least then someone in the world might pay attention. The city is ghostly, dark and covered in rubbish that no one has the energy—or the economic means—to collect.
It was supposed to be a lightning war, the offensive Trump launched last January after removing Nicolás Maduro and taking control of Venezuelan oil, long the lifeblood of Cuba. The oil blockade imposed by the American president has pushed the island into the worst energy crisis in its history, with mass blackouts now lasting for most of the day.
Trump, the “liberator,” predicted that the matter would be resolved quickly: “Cuba will be at our feet within months.”
That was on January 4, 2026. But accuracy was hardly to be expected from the man who also predicted that the conflict in Iran would be over within five weeks at most.
There is no disputing that Cubans have been pushed to the limits of their endurance. But suffering Washington’s unprecedented pressure is one thing; declaring defeat and surrendering to the Great Enemy is quite another.
In the end, Cubans are simply perfecting an art they have mastered over more than half a century: the art of adapting.
Until the beginning of the summer, Havana was the only part of this enchanting, 777-mile-long island to remain largely protected from blackouts that elsewhere lasted as long as 12 hours. People said that once the capital itself was caught in the grip of the energy restrictions, the rest of the country would collapse.
It did not.
Through a series of makeshift solutions—some of them ingenious—Cubans have retreated behind their pride and are answering Trump’s blows one by one.
And there is something else. In this surreal climate, Miguel Díaz-Canel’s regime has adopted a noticeably softer approach towards its own people. Some political prisoners have been released, and Cubans feel freer to discuss politics openly—something that would have been unthinkable only a few years ago.
The most remarkable case is that of Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, the Cuban artist and dissident, and one of the founders of the San Isidro Movement. He was unexpectedly released in July despite serving a five-year sentence for such purported offences as “improperly” using the Cuban flag during a protest—by draping it over his shoulders—or attempting to organise an alternative art biennale to the official government event.
After years spent in and out of prison, most recently for protesting against the regime on July 11, 2021, Otero Alcántara was taken from a secret detention facility, placed on an American Airlines flight and sent to Miami. In exchange for having the remainder of his sentence cancelled, he agreed to remain in permanent exile.
Among the many contradictory but significant features of this period in Cuban history is the curious survival of an official commercial air link between Havana and Florida, even as US sanctions have reached their harshest level ever.
“I believe in people. I believe that people will choose who governs them,” Otero Alcántara told CNN after landing in Miami. “I believe in democracy. The people will choose.”
The dissident used a word that no longer seems entirely taboo: democracy. He used it because he knows that every day lived under these extreme conditions plants new desires and aspirations in the minds of millions of Cubans.
The only question is when it might become realistic to believe that some form of democracy can be applied to Cuba as well. For now, the model of government does not appear to be the population’s most urgent concern. Most Cubans, it seems, would settle for almost any political system other than the one they have.
Donald Trump is clearly less interested in a “democratic” process on the island. When he speaks about Cuba, he describes it as a place that, unlike Venezuela, possesses no valuable resources and would therefore require considerable investment before it could become profitable.
Profitable is the new democratic.
Trump is betting that the greater the suffering, the more profound the eventual change will be. The regime, meanwhile, is betting that it can either satisfy the American president or resist him for long enough.
As usual, it is ordinary citizens who are trapped in between.
“Life changed suddenly, literally from one day to the next,” said Alejandro Rodríguez, a commentator on Cuban state television. “Venezuelan oil was essential to keeping the national electricity grid functioning and, with it, many of the country’s social services.
“Within 24 hours, public transport ground to a halt. Schools and offices were forced to adapt, sometimes opening for only one day a week. Food production and the supply of basic necessities began an inexorable slowdown. Cuba is dependent. The oil we produce here is not refined enough, and this situation has been designed to break us.”
And yet Alejandro—like many of his compatriots—does not blame Washington’s aggressive policies alone.
“Many people also see the energy crisis as the result of our own mismanagement of energy resources. The infrastructure should have been replaced years ago. Instead, we are still dependent on systems inherited from the Soviet Union, and to call them obsolete does not begin to capture how inadequate they are.
“Unfortunately, the available alternatives require implementation times we simply do not have. The aggressive policies pursued by the United States, going back to the Biden administration, only partly explain the condition in which we find ourselves. Our own domestic policies left us unprepared for an emergency of this kind.”
No solution is in sight, and any eventual one will be immensely complex.
“Let us suppose, purely hypothetically, that the current government disappeared tomorrow,” Alejandro said. “The process of social, economic and political change the country requires would still be enormous—and extraordinarily complicated.”
The legendary Malecón, the captivating waterfront that embraces the capital and was once noisy and choked with traffic, is now almost deserted. With petrol approaching $30 a gallon, getting around is a luxury reserved for the privileged few.
The magnificent, fuel-guzzling American cars of the 1950s are increasingly parked at the roadside as props for the selfies of the few tourists who still visit. In their place, electric motorcycles and rickshaws—gifts from China—have begun appearing everywhere.
People are getting by with imported heavy-duty lithium batteries used to power televisions and fans during the blackouts. They are building improvised generators that run on natural gas, which is easier to obtain, and installing solar panels on rooftops and even on vehicles.
The panels cost between $600 and $4,000. Havana’s municipal government has acquired them in large numbers to keep the city’s traffic lights working.
Taken together, these improvised solutions form a new kind of Cuban grid—one that is more firmly in the hands of the Cuban people. It keeps society functioning even when the power is out and the fuel lines have run dry.
An energy democracy, of sorts.
These solutions have allowed the Cuban government to ration electricity, switching the lights on for only a few hours each day and squeezing the maximum possible use from its dwindling fuel reserves as it attempts to hold out against Washington.
Once again, the occupant of the White House is discovering that overthrowing the system founded by Fidel Castro is not quite as simple as it might appear.
In this limbo of humidity and anxiety, Cubans are nevertheless convinced that something is happening. They sense that some kind of underground negotiation is under way, aimed at finding a dignified solution—one that does not involve unconditional surrender to the most unrestrained form of American capitalism.
After Venezuela, with the continuing involvement in Iran and the crisis in Gaza, the last thing Trump wants is to open yet another military front.
The deus ex machina of this still indistinct transition is Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the son of a cleaner and a bartender who fled Cuba with their parents in the 50’s when Fulgencio Batista was still in power. He is the man of the powerful anti-Castro lobby that has put down deep roots in Hialeah, the Miami neighbourhood where almost no one speaks English and drivers wait for the lights to change while salsa music blasts from their cars.
Officially, Rubio maintains the rigid line set by his commander-in-chief.
“The Cuban government must fail,” he has said. “We are prepared to be very realistic about how we achieve that, and patient. These are complex matters that take time, and obviously we are prepared to do everything we can.”
But the fact that Havana is receiving increasingly frequent visits from Cuban Americans—who were once far from welcome—suggests that, alongside the pressure of sanctions, a pragmatic effort to establish a presence on the island is already under way.
Hundreds of properties have passed from local Cuban owners to Cuban Americans, who can buy a 100-square-metre apartment overlooking the ocean for $40,000 or $50,000.
Profit first. Then, perhaps, democracy.
A showroom selling luxury Chinese cars has opened a short walk from the legendary Hotel Raquel, now closed for lack of tourists, and directly opposite a mound of rubbish covered in flies.
It looks like a mirage. It may also be a clue to something that remains impossible to predict.
For months, the Díaz-Canel administration has responded by announcing reforms of a kind never before seen on the island: a series of decrees intended to open Cuba to foreign markets and investment, preferably from Europe or the BRICS countries.
Many observers have described Cuba’s new free-market reforms as the most radical overhaul of the island’s economy since the communist revolution. The 176 measures are intended to further decentralise the state-controlled economy.
Under Cuba’s current model, the government largely determines what is produced, who produces it, the prices at which goods are sold and how the country’s resources are allocated.
The new plan would allow considerably more space for private enterprise. Businesses would be permitted to import and export without state intermediaries, hire employees freely, use private banks and receive investment from Cubans living abroad.
It would even allow fast-food chains to establish themselves on the island.
A McDonald’s in place of the celebrated Bodeguita del Medio? One wonders what Ernest Hemingway would have made of that.
Luis Carlos Battista, a Cuban-American political scientist and lawyer completing a doctorate at the University of Salamanca, believes this is the beginning of a new era.
“Elements that for decades were considered pillars of the revolutionary economy—such as the state monopoly over foreign trade and the centralisation of the productive forces—have been dismantled,” he said.
President Díaz-Canel maintains that the proposed measures are based on an analysis of the Vietnamese and Chinese models: communist states with market economies.
There is, of course, a catch.
In approving the reforms, the Cuban authorities warned that implementation could be slow. They also stressed that the measures would not be viable unless the United States lifted its energy and financial embargo on the island.
But can they succeed before the country sinks?
That question probably lies at the heart of the negotiations taking place behind the scenes. The only certainty is that the Cuban regime must move quickly.
Walking through the rubbish-covered streets of Vedado, or even within a few steps of the Capitolio, the transformation under way can also be measured by what is no longer there.
The murals celebrating the revolution have been disappearing for some time. The words Hasta la victoria siempre—“Ever onward to victory”—remain emblazoned in enormous letters across the Plaza de la Revolución, once crowded with tourists and now almost empty.
Elsewhere, the motivational slogans of Castroism seem to have become little more than a memory.
This year’s July 26 commemoration, marking the 73rd anniversary of the beginning of the revolution, was also a subdued affair—and not only because of the energy crisis.
With his customary rhetoric, Díaz-Canel chose the Western city of Pinar for the ceremony. He appeared in the main square at exactly 5.15am, the time at which the attack on the Moncada Barracks began in 1953.
Díaz-Canel said he had selected the location because, “in spite of everything, the city has managed to maintain an infant mortality rate of 4.8 per 1,000 live births, while recording no maternal deaths.”
“This is what we call heroism!” he thundered into the microphone, drawing an ovation from a crowd that looked tired but remained united.
Rigoberto, who works for a state-owned agricultural company, asked for his surname to be withheld before explaining why he was there.
“The revolutionary process profoundly shaped my family and the life I have today,” he said. “Although I am poor, I was able to go to university. I learned four languages. I was able to sing professionally for 15 years.
“I have not achieved a great deal materially, mainly because I have never been an ambitious person. What I do is compare what my family’s life was like before the triumph of the revolution with what it was able to achieve afterwards.
“It is the duty of every revolutionary Cuban to take part in these celebrations. We do it for the homeland.”
For the homeland—but not only for that.
Many Cubans attend state celebrations because they fear losing access to the few benefits they still receive, benefits on which their survival may depend.
Díaz-Canel’s July 26 address lasted only a few minutes. At the end of the ceremony, which concluded before sunrise, he made a point of mentioning the great absentee: Raúl Castro, the 95-year-old former leader and Fidel’s brother.
According to popular rumour, Raúl still has a say in the regime’s decisions. But for the first time, he did not attend the commemoration in person.
“He asked me to give everyone a warm embrace,” Díaz-Canel said.
One of the most surprising features of this delicate historical transition is that the disappearance from public life of the last great protagonist of the Cuban Revolution does not mean the Castro family is leaving the stage.
On the contrary, that name still appears inextricably bound to the island’s destiny.
Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, 42, Raúl Castro’s grandson and a colonel in the Interior Ministry, has risen in little more than a decade from being his grandfather’s imposing bodyguard to becoming one of the central figures in the extraordinarily delicate negotiations between Cuba and the United States.
The son of Déborah Castro Espín and General Luis Alberto Rodríguez López-Calleja—the architect of the GAESA military conglomerate, which controls a substantial share of the Cuban economy—“Raulito” grew up at the heart of the revolutionary dynasty.
An economics graduate, he accompanied his grandfather to virtually every important meeting, gradually evolving from a security officer into an aide and political confidant.
One of his relatives, former Interior Ministry analyst Arturo López-Levy, summed up the transformation: “He was not left waiting outside the door. He was inside every meeting.”
That proximity to the centre of power has now propelled him into a role that would once have seemed inconceivable for a man who has never held public office.
During secret talks initiated by Havana in an attempt to find a way out of the Trump administration’s sanctions, Rodríguez Castro reportedly met separately with CIA director John Ratcliffe and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
His name is even said to have been discussed in Washington as a possible future Cuban leader acceptable to the Trump administration.
The paradox is unmistakable: Cuba’s transition beyond Castroism may ultimately be negotiated by a direct descendant of the family that has ruled the island since the 1959 revolution.
His rise, however, is shadowed by serious allegations.
Testimony and US court records have linked him to the so-called “Cuban Mafia in Quintana Roo,” a network accused of smuggling migrants from Cuba to Mexico and bringing goods purchased with stolen credit cards onto the island.
Two convicted members of the network named him as a collaborator. One claimed that, in exchange for protection from the Cuban coastguard and customs authorities, Rodríguez Castro received a high-performance boat, a Rolex watch, a Suzuki motorcycle and Louis Vuitton clothing.
Rodríguez Castro has not been charged, and it remains unclear whether he is under investigation. Cuban Deputy Foreign Minister Carlos Fernández de Cossío has called the allegations “slanderous” and denied any government connection to the network.
And yet his reported taste for material comfort has been interpreted by some American interlocutors as a sign that he might be receptive to capitalist ideas—a curious point of contact between an heir to Cuba’s revolutionary dynasty and Trump’s America.
In a recent interview with The National, the UAE-based newspaper, Rodríguez Castro insisted that Cuba “does not represent even the slightest threat to the United States” and that the Cuban government is seeking “a distinctly Cuban economic model.”
Profit first and democracy later, perhaps.
The last remaining piece of the revolution that still seems to carry meaning in Cuba today is in the hands of a 29-year-old who left the island for London in 2022, where he earned a master’s degree in political communication.
For years, David González has studied non-violent political movements, focusing on the strategies and conditions that determine whether they succeed.
He founded an organisation called El Proyecto, which arranges parties, themed evenings and cultural events in a place where having fun might seem the least of anyone’s concerns.
What began with a series of film screenings has grown into a cultural space unlike any other in Havana: concerts, art exhibitions, lectures and parties, but increasingly also political debates and protests against the Cuban government.
In a city defined by its relentless blackouts, there is virtually nowhere else like it.
David explains it this way: “There is no better way to oppose this government than by being happy. They want to see you frustrated. They want you angry. But the less hatred and anger you carry inside, the better equipped you are to confront them.
“That is how we fight. With good humour and positive energy.”
Even The New York Times has written about David. The American newspaper was readmitted to Cuba on an official press visa for the first time in more than 30 years—another development of no small significance.
Since then, David has become a minor media phenomenon in his own country, and a point of reference for a new generation of Cubans who, despite everything, still have aspirations.
“There is one Cuba dying while, at the same time, another is being born,” David told us. “Their symbols, their culture, their slogans, the old language of hatred and violence—they are all disappearing.
“And they cannot stop the new Cuba, because there are too many people resisting, creating and continuing to dream.”
Dreams. Profit. Democracy. Socialism.
It will take a magic formula to turn those ingredients into a possible future.
