With much of the world’s attention focused on the war in Iran and the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, less attention seems to be paid to what’s going on in the Communist hell hole of Cuba. Cuba has been a Communist dictatorship since before I was born and unfortunately did not abandon Communism when much of the world did following the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
The Communist regime in Cuba has survived war, sanctions and the inevitable economic mismanagement that socialist governments are characterised by. However now, after over sixty five years since the Communists siezed power and 47 years after the Berlin Wall went, we might finally be seeing the potential collapse of the Communist government in Havana.
Fuel shortages caused by the Trump Administration’s toppling of the Cuba friendly Maduro regime in Venezuela have impacted daily life and there has been at least one outbreak of violence aimed at a local Communist Party office. Things must be truly bad for the people of Cuba to rise up and attack one of the offices of the party that has kept Cuba in its iron grip for many decades.
From reading various news sources it seems that Cuba is running out of petroleum products. They have hardly any petrol, diesel or aviation fuel left. There have been protests by Cubans about the poor availability of food and fuel which are not protests that have been very common in Communist Cuba’s past. Things must be bad in Cuba for the people to protest against the Communists and the protests and the falling availability of fuel might well be the stick that pushes these Communists off of their perch.
Cutting off Cuba from it’s oil supplies from Venezuela is a masterstroke from President Trump. Cuba has few natural fuel resources of their own and they have relied on imported oil for the vast majority of their energy needs. Turning off the oil tap to Cuba has hurt the Communists badly.
It’s clear to me that the Cuban Communists are in trouble, probably the worst trouble the regime has been in for decades, but whether or not this trouble is lethal for the Communists remains to be seen. Maybe if the current war in Iran finishes relatively quickly and to the satisfactions of the US and their allies then the US government can turn its attention to the Cuban Communists and finish them off? The transition from Communism to freedom is no doubt going to be difficult for the ordinary Cubans to manage but in the long term if the Communist government falls and investment floods back into Cuba from Cuban exiles and others, then they could end up a whole lot better off than they are at present.
Cuba libre, the freeing of Cuba, has taken an extraordinary long time, but we may at last be seeing some light at the end of a very dark Communist tunnel.