By Rosa Miriam Elizalde on June 18, 2026
Havana, foto: Bill Hackwell
The idea of a medieval siege against Cuba is no longer just a metaphor. It describes a tangible reality experienced on a daily basis, one that is already manifesting in dramatic ways—with babies dying at birth, food not reaching its destination, and shipments of humanitarian aid held up due to a lack of fuel, transportation, and logistical capacity. A study by the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) estimates that infant mortality in Cuba rose from 4 per 1,000 live births in 2018 to 9.9 in 2025—a 148 percent increase.
The same report calculates that, if the rate had remained at previous levels, approximately 1,800 babies would not have died. Cubadebate, for its part, published a devastating analysis of the current impact of the U.S. blockade. According to its data, 1,400 megawatts of distributed electricity generation cannot be utilized because Cuba is unable to acquire the diesel and fuel oil needed for generators, engines, and power trucks.
This is no small figure: it is equivalent to nearly half of the national electricity demand during peak hours and to about five Antonio Guiteras thermoelectric plants (the largest on the island) operating simultaneously. The consequences of this shortage are familiar to every Cuban family: more than 20 hours, on average, of daily power outages with direct effects on cooking, water pumping, the preservation of medicines, communications, and the country’s basic functioning. Cuba’s public health system, recognized for decades for its first-world indicators, is being pushed into a desperate situation.
The survival rate for children with cancer has dropped to 65 percent, compared to 85 percent recorded before the intensification of the energy blockade. More than 100,000 people are awaiting elective or reconstructive surgeries, including 5,152 cancer patients and some 12,000 children. The report also describes the deterioration in care for 2,8 patients who depend on hemodialysis, a treatment that requires water, electricity, supplies, and specialized equipment. The aggression is also evident in the area of medications.
Of the 395 drugs that Cuba produces as part of its basic health package, 300 are in short supply due to difficulties in accessing raw materials and pharmaceutical supplies. The medieval-style blockade not only prevents the import of finished products; it also stifles domestic production. The same is true for essential diagnostic tests, including those used for the early detection of cancer. The blockade also affects food supplies. More than 100,000 children do not receive their daily liter of state-subsidized milk, mainly due to a lack of fuel to transport it to the cities.
Difficulties in purchasing wheat have left the country with barely half the flour it needs, while the rationed bread—which is still miraculously delivered to every family—has been reduced from 80 to 60 grams. This is not pressure against an “elite,” as claimed by the psychopathic U.S. Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, who is obsessed with Cuba, but against the family’s dinner table.
Even humanitarian aid is caught up in this same suffocating mechanism. According to data from Cubadebate, 170 containers of essential goods, valued at $6.3 million, have not been distributed due to a lack of fuel.
The World Food Programme holds 11,000 metric tons of staple foods in Cuban warehouses, but they are being distributed at a much slower pace than necessary. UNICEF and the UNDP have also reported containers in Cuban ports whose unloading is proceeding at an extremely slow pace. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, said this week, verbatim, that “Cuba is drowning.” The Cuban case illustrates a modern form of warfare without massive bombings, but with equally devastating consequences for the civilian population.
There is no need to surround a city with walls and catapults when one can prevent fuel, spare parts, medicines, raw materials, bank payments, or donations from entering. The contemporary siege is carried out through banks, insurance companies, shipping lines, blacklists, regulatory threats, and extraterritorial sanctions. Therefore, the central question is not whether Cuba has internal difficulties, its own mistakes, or management problems.
The issue is whether any nation can guarantee normal living conditions in this medieval atmosphere in which every means is employed to relentlessly destroy a people. A silent destruction, moreover, because this is the world of Canudos, the besieged community described by Mario Vargas Llosa in *The War at the End of the World*, where “it is easier to imagine the death of one person than that of a hundred or a thousand. When multiplied, suffering becomes abstract.”
Source: La Jornada, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English