Cuban Crisis Intensifies: Expert Warns of Dwindling Time for Change

This Monday, a professor from the University of Miami penned an opinion piece in the New York Times, emphasizing that Cuba's time is running out and urging that the Cuban people cannot afford to wait while Washington and Havana remain locked in a perpetual standoff.

Authored by Michael J. Bustamante, a specialist in Cuban and Cuban-American studies, the article paints a grim picture of the island's situation, describing it as a "slow suffocation" that no energy improvisation or the “creative resistance” championed by Miguel Díaz-Canel can mask.

Bustamante highlights a Cuba where electricity is available for just one or two hours a day, where food and medicine rely on shipments from family members abroad, and where summer heat makes it impossible for children to sleep.

The scenario has worsened since January due to the de facto oil blockade imposed by the Trump administration, pushing the Cuban populace "to the brink of what they can endure," according to the academic.

Escalating Social Unrest in Cuba

The article arrives amid unprecedented social unrest in Cuba: nightly pot-banging protests, blazing garbage barricades, and power outages lasting up to 24 hours have become almost routine occurrences.

The Cuban Conflict Observatory recorded a record 107 in-person street protests in June. Additionally, a slide accidentally shown during a televised government meeting revealed that even regime officials fear a "social explosion."

This accumulated tension is also evident in public opinion. A survey by El Toque published in May, with more than 42,000 valid responses, showed that 60.9% of participants supported direct U.S. military intervention in Cuba, and 64.9% favored overthrowing the government "by any means necessary, including armed force."

Diplomatic Efforts and Their Collapse

Bustamante outlines the diplomatic maneuvers of recent months: in the spring, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and CIA Director John Ratcliffe engaged in direct talks with Raúl Castro's grandson and members of Cuba's security apparatus. They explored an agreement allowing some communist authorities to retain power in exchange for economic liberalization, the release of political prisoners, and severing ties with Washington's adversaries.

Since May, these efforts have stalled: the regime rejected leadership change demands, and the United States responded with secondary sanctions that forced numerous foreign companies to exit the island.

Neither the economic liberalization package announced in June nor the release of artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara—who claimed he was "expelled from Cuba" upon arriving in Miami—swayed the Trump administration's stance.

Potential Outcomes and Ongoing Resistance

The author examines potential outcomes considered by various actors: a collapse reminiscent of Eastern Europe in 1989, a negotiated transition, or military action leading to a U.S. protectorate, similar to the situation following Maduro's capture in Venezuela.

Activist Rosa María Payá has labeled the Cuban government as the "Berlin Wall of our times." However, Bustamante cautions that increasing instability does not guarantee the regime's downfall: the repressive apparatus remains intact, the opposition is weakened, and up to two million Cubans have emigrated since 2020, choosing to leave rather than engage in political mobilization.

The regime faces criminal charges in the United States—Raúl Castro is charged over the 1996 shootdown of Brothers to the Rescue planes—and shows little willingness to concede. For Bustamante, accepting Washington's conditions would mean "negotiating the regime's own demise."

"Governments can afford to keep playing tug-of-war. Ordinary Cubans cannot," concludes the academic, emphasizing that the island's people cannot indefinitely delay their meals, medical treatments, or life's most crucial decisions.