Dispatches: The second “special period” in the Cuban Revolution

Key Notes

• Cuba is confronting an acute energy crisis after Venezuela’s oil exports to the island ceased following Nicolás Maduro’s ouster and subsequent U.S. pressure, leaving Havana with acute fuel shortages, rolling blackouts, disrupted public services, and significant economic strain.

• Regional leaders such as Mexico’s Claudia Sheinbaum, Gabriel Boric, and Lula da Silva offered rhetorical support or limited humanitarian aid but refrained from restoring substantive energy supplies to Cuba under U.S. threats of tariffs and sanctions.

• The current moment functions as a stress test for the Cuban regime: it reveals both the limits of Havana’s external lifelines and the extent to which U.S. leverage in the hemisphere may be more consolidated than previously assumed.

Development

Since early 2026, Cuba’s energy crisis has intensified following the removal of Nicolás Maduro from the Venezuelan presidency and the subsequent disruption of preferential oil shipments to the island. Under increased U.S. pressure ,an executive order signed by President Donald Trump threatening tariffs on countries supplying oil to Cuba. Caracas curtailed crude flows that had historically sustained Havana’s electricity generation and transport sectors. Mexico initially signaled solidarity, but President Claudia Sheinbaum reassessed her position amid the risk of economic retaliation. Although leaders such as Gabriel Boric and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva expressed support, regional assistance has remained limited and cautious. 

Meanwhile, conditions on the island continue to deteriorate amid prolonged blackouts, fuel shortages, and mounting economic strain. President Miguel Díaz-Canel, the current head of the Cuban government, initially sought to frame the crisis through a renewed anti-imperialist discourse directed at the U.S., echoing longstanding revolutionary rhetoric. However, this second wave of austerity, evocative of the 1990s “Special Period,” as Fidel Castro termed the crisis following the collapse of the USSR, unfolds under markedly different structural constraints. Russia, historically a strategic backer of Havana, remains absorbed in its war in Ukraine and has limited capacity to provide sustained economic or energy support. Moreover, the leadership dynamic differs from the 1990s, when Fidel Castro mobilized political legitimacy and nationalist resilience during the post-Soviet collapse of Cuba’s economy.

Analysis

Cuba’s economic model has evolved through successive phases, from centralized state socialism to cautious and limited market-oriented reforms implemented largely in response to structural crises. As Cuban economist Carlos Mesa-Lago argues in Cuba Under Raúl Castro: Assessing the Reforms, many of these adjustments were reactive, driven either by internal inefficiencies or by external shocks such as the collapse of the Soviet Union. The current crisis is distinct in that renewed U.S. pressure follows nearly a decade of compounded constraints: sanctions tightened during the first Trump administration were followed by the COVID-19 pandemic, which devastated the island’s tourism revenues and foreign currency inflows. This sequence left Cuba economically fragile and highly exposed to additional external coercion. Aware of these vulnerabilities, President Miguel Díaz-Canel has signaled openness to negotiation. For President Donald Trump and Marco Rubio, meanwhile, a hardline stance toward Havana carries symbolic and potential electoral value, particularly among segments of the Latin electorate in the United States.

Forecast

There are important structural differences between Venezuela’s and Cuba’s capacity to withstand prolonged economic scarcity. Historically, large-scale Cuban emigration during periods of austerity has functioned as a pressure-release valve for the regime, reducing the state’s immediate burden of provision while generating remittances that partially stabilize household consumption. This dynamic has mitigated the direct political costs of economic contraction.

Moreover, as Steven Levitsky argues in Revolution and Dictatorship, revolutionary regimes such as Cuba’s tend to develop more cohesive ruling coalitions and more effective mechanisms of repression than competitive authoritarian systems. Over decades, the Cuban government has systematically dismantled organized domestic opposition, leaving even less institutional space for regime contestation than in Venezuela. 

Under these conditions, the most likely outcome is not regime change but regime durability combined with tactical negotiation. Precisely because revolutionary regimes generate cohesive elites and strong repressive capacities, and because they offer few incentives for elite defection, Cuba is unlikely to experience the kind of fragmentation that typically precedes political transition. The baseline forecast, therefore, points toward continuity: sustained repression and elite cohesion alongside pragmatic efforts to negotiate sanctions relief, humanitarian access, or energy arrangements. In contrast to Venezuela—where competitive authoritarian features have left somewhat more space for opposition actors and elite maneuvering, Cuba’s narrower political arena makes systemic change less probable than calibrated external bargaining.

An additional signal worth monitoring is the reported meeting between U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, the grandson of Raúl Castro. While any direct engagement remains politically sensitive on both sides, such contact could indicate exploratory channels for a negotiated adjustment rather than outright regime collapse. In this scenario, Cuba could pursue a controlled and limited economic opening, targeted liberalization in specific sectors such as tourism, small private enterprise, or remittances, in exchange for calibrated sanctions relief from Washington. This would mirror, to some extent, the Venezuelan pattern of partial economic flexibilization under continued political control. Under this pathway, the regime would seek to preserve elite cohesion and political dominance while introducing pragmatic economic concessions sufficient to stabilize the energy crisis and ease external pressure, producing continuity through adaptation rather than rupture.

Risks

Intensified pressure on the Cuban regime particularly through tighter energy restrictions could significantly worsen living conditions on the island, especially in Havana, where blackouts, fuel shortages, and declining public services are already acute. A deeper deterioration in basic standards of living may accelerate outward migration, increasing the number of Cubans seeking entry into the United States. This dynamic runs counter to the Trump administration’s restrictive migration stance and could generate renewed domestic political tensions. Compounding the risk, Cuba has historically resisted systematically receiving deportees from the United States, complicating enforcement mechanisms and potentially creating administrative and humanitarian bottlenecks. As a result, a strategy aimed at maximizing pressure on Havana could inadvertently trigger renewed migration volatility, generating policy challenges and political costs for Washington.