By Raúl Antonio Capote on August 28, 2026 from Havana
the longest genocide in history, foto: Prensa Latina
So far in 2026, Cuba has received a single shipment of oil: some 100,000 metric tons of crude donated by Russia—and nothing else.
The sun sets on the horizon and the island seems to be sinking into darkness; only distant glimmers are visible—fireflies dotting the archipelago—like the navigation lights of a ship struggling on the high seas in the midst of a storm.
January 29, 2026, may seem like a recent date—the day U.S. President Donald Trump signed an Executive Order, 2,207 words declaring Cuba an “unusual and extraordinary threat to national security and foreign policy” of his country—but those 200 days have subjected an entire people to suffering.
Using that argument—the very same one that has been used to justify interventions in dozens of nations—he authorized the imposition of tariffs on any country that dared to sell oil to the island. “Cuba will not be able to survive,” Trump declared to the press that night, without hesitation.
It was not merely a threat; the energy blockade is not just another coercive measure—it is tightening the noose around the neck, it is picking at a wound that has been open for more than six decades.
To understand its uniqueness, one must distinguish it from the economic, commercial, and financial blockade, made official on February 3, 1962—a policy of collective punishment that the international community has condemned on multiple occasions at the UN General Assembly.
The energy blockade is something else entirely; it is the deliberate interruption of the flow of fuel to a nation that depends on it for everything to function: its hospitals, its water treatment plants, water pumping, its food refrigeration systems, transportation, and schools.
Without a doubt, the message on January 29 was clear: no one, under any circumstances, could supply Cuba without facing the U.S. sanctions apparatus.
As if that were not enough, on May 1, Trump signed another Executive Order that internationalized the blockade, expanding sanctions to financial institutions and individuals operating in sectors vital to the Cuban economy; and in June, the U.S. government sanctioned the state-owned company Unión Cuba-Petróleo (Cupet), the heart of the island’s energy system.
The result: so far in 2026, Cuba has received only a single shipment of oil—some 100,000 metric tons of crude donated by Russia—and nothing else. More than 1,400 megawatts of installed capacity remain idle due to a lack of crude oil; the power grid is sustained by what the island produces domestically—domestic crude, associated gas from wells, and renewable sources—but it is not enough.
Power outages have become prolonged. In many regions of the country, outages exceed 22 hours a day; public transportation has been drastically reduced; and classes are held remotely when electricity permits.
THOSE UNDER SIEGE
But the deepest impact is not measured in megawatts; it is measured in human lives: more than 32,800 pregnant women face additional risks due to the energy shortage, which is affecting the healthcare system.
In the healthcare system—which for decades was the pride of the island and a model for Latin America—hospitals run on generators that consume fuel that isn’t arriving; intensive care units are operating at capacity; and ambulances are on the road under extreme rationing.
Despair has a face: mothers who cannot cook, patients who cannot refrigerate their medications, and the elderly and children enduring the tropical heat without ventilation.
This energy blockade has precedents, but none exactly like it. History records sieges that sought to bring populations to their knees through hunger or cold—for example, the siege of Leningrad, which lasted 872 days and claimed more than a million lives—but those occurred during declared conflicts.
The situation against Cuba is different. There are no tanks at the borders, nor bombs falling on cities; it is a suffocation administered from a distance, without firing a single shot.
UN human rights experts have described this measure as “a serious violation of international law and a grave threat to a democratic and equitable international order.”
The Cuban government has brought the issue before the United Nations General Assembly, where it has characterized it as “an act of genocide” and “collective punishment.”
These are not rhetorical exaggerations; the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide defines as such acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national group.
How many generations must suffer the consequences of a policy designed to make life in a nation unviable before we can speak of genocide?
THOSE WHO RESIST
And yet, the island has not surrendered, because resistance is, for Cubans, a way of life learned over six decades of the blockade.
Cuba has drilled new oil wells and reversed the downward trend in its domestic crude oil production; it has installed more than 50 photovoltaic solar farms that contribute over 1,000 megawatts and generate, during peak sunlight hours, 38% of the energy consumed during the day; it has restored 348 megawatts of thermal power generation at plants that were previously out of service.
It’s not enough, but it’s all we have. Neighbors share the generator that works, the candle that provides light, and the little fuel that remains. Solidarity is not an abstract concept in Cuba: it is the only currency still in circulation.
The world watches, the world knows, but the world, for the most part, does not act. Airlines have suspended their flights to Havana; international companies are withdrawing their investments; the fear of secondary sanctions—the punishment for trading with Cuba—has paralyzed the international community, though not the solidarity of the people.
We have reached 200 days—a cold, administrative figure that says nothing about the children who have died and who previously survived without any problems, in a country where the infant mortality rate was less than five per 1,000 live births, on par with a few developed nations.
Nor does it say anything about the lack of medicines to treat cancer, about the elderly man who died of a curable disease, nor does it say anything about the children who grow up with the constant hum of generators as the soundtrack to their childhood.
We are facing a decision made in Washington, with all its consequences, but without any assumption of responsibility. Cuba has spent 200 days under the energy blockade out of 66 years under the embargo; it has existed for centuries against all odds, defying the logic of the empires that have sought to subdue it.
Darkness is not the end; the archipelago withstands the onslaught of bad weather, sailing on, transformed into those vessels of the expeditionaries who came to liberate their land from Spanish colonial rule—small boats that, in the light of dawn, merge into a single, immense yacht.
Ramon Capote is a Cuban researcher and journalist
Source: Cuba en Resumen