USA

As U.S. threatens, Cubans look ahead, with hope and trepidation

HAVANA — Yenisey Taboada’s small apartment on the outskirts of Havana is filled with photos of her imprisoned son.

Duannis was 22 and watching football in a cafe when he spontaneously joined Cuba’s largest anti-government street protest in years. He was beaten by security forces, arrested and sentenced to 14 years in prison.

His mother’s apartment is also full of American flags.

Taboada fervently dreams of U.S. intervention to overthrow the Cuban Communist Party and free his son, now 26, and nearly 1,000 political prisoners. The recent US military operation to oust Venezuela’s authoritarian leader Nicolás Maduro has given him hope.

“We are under pressure,” Taboada said. “We can’t do this alone.”

The tattoo features a heart, the name Duannis and a date.

Yenisei Taboada in his small apartment in Havana.

1. Yenisey Tabaoada’s small apartment in Havana is filled with photos of her imprisoned son, Duannis Tabaoda. 2. Duannis Taboada’s sister’s tattoo commemorates the day July 11, 2021, when her brother was arrested after participating in an anti-government protest. 3. Yenisei Taboada in his small apartment in Havana. (Kate Linthicum / Los Angeles Times)

But other Cubans are angry at the United States and at President Trump, who this month said he believed he would have “the honor of taking Cuba” after launching a war on Iran, saying “I can do anything I want with it.”

“They want to turn Cuba into another colony like Puerto Rico,” said Rafael García Gómez, 63, who works in a hotel. He blamed the US oil embargo for the island’s deepening energy crisis and vowed to take up arms if Trump attempted military action.

“We will determine our own destiny,” Garcia said.

So who exactly are “we”? Leaders in Havana and Washington say they are holding direct talks for the first time in years, but as speculation about what will happen next grows, one thing is becoming clearer: The Cuban people have so far been excluded from any agreement.

“Civil society has no place at the table,” said Manuel Cuesta Morúa, a longtime pro-democracy activist in Havana. “We want dialogues and discussions in which Cubans are the protagonists.”

Men are fishing when the Maguro ship arrives

As the oil blockade rapidly depletes Cuba’s fuel supply, triggering a series of lengthy power outages across the island, many people here are exhausted and increasingly vocal about their desire for radical changes in Cuba.

But what Cubans want is far from uniform.

Most agree that alleviating economic distress should be an immediate focus, but some believe this requires gradual, socialist-style liberalization of the economy, while others want a full transition to free-market capitalism, including greater foreign investment and private enterprise.

Then there is politics. Many are fed up with the one-party political system but are discussing what could replace it.

Ted Henken, a professor of Cuban studies at Baruch College in New York, said decades of poverty and the collapse of Cuba’s once ideal health care system have led to widespread frustration.

“You’ve really had a gradual but very clear decline in investment in standard communist revolutionary ideology over the last 35 years,” Henken said. “Because you can’t eat ideology.

“I rarely meet Cubans who defend this system,” he added, “because they’ve lived in it and it doesn’t work.”

People walking and cycling on a wide empty street in Havana

Cuba’s leaders have insisted in recent weeks that their political system is not open to debate.

There are no political opinion polls in Cuba. Many people are unaccustomed to speaking out for fear that even a social media post criticizing an authoritarian government could land them in jail. The country’s most vocal activists fled the island after Cuba suppressed a nationwide protest on July 11, 2021 (protests in which Duannis Taboada also marched).

But in interviews in Havana this month, many people, some on the condition of anonymity, said they were so desperate that any change would be welcomed.

“This is hell,” said a taxi driver named Pedro, as he passed piles of garbage rotting on the streets because there wasn’t enough gasoline for garbage trucks. “There are people here who go years without eating meat or fish.”

He said the United States wants Cuban leaders to do “what they did to Maduro.”

“They should send them to prison and give them bread only once a day so they know what it means to starve,” he said.

People on a dark street at sunset during a power outage.

Critics of the Cuban government say it would be a disappointment if the U.S. model of removing Maduro but keeping the leftist Chavista movement intact was repeated in Venezuela. Maduro’s vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, now rules Venezuela, while the United States controls the country’s vast oil reserves. Venezuela’s leading pro-democracy opposition figure, María Corina Machado, remains in exile and the United States has yet to call new elections.

Cuesta said opposition is less developed in Cuba, which has been under authoritarian control for decades longer than Venezuela. Building democratic institutions will take time, so he advocates for what he calls a “calm transition” that would include a timetable for future elections.

There is also a large group of Cubans who say the US should stop intervening altogether and see Trump’s actions as the latest step in a long history of US interventions.

“These are not negotiations. These are not fair talks,” said Liz Olivia Fernández, a 32-year-old journalist with the Havana-based news outlet Belly of the Beast. “You can’t make a deal with an abuser.”

García said, “If you want to gain my trust, are you going to hit me with a stick?” he said.

Cuba comes from a position of weakness as the energy crisis sparks new waves of anger over what many see as mismanagement of the state-controlled economy. “The US will impose conditions on us, that’s what will happen,” said a doorman who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Power had been out in Taboada’s neighborhood for almost 24 hours. As the sun set, neighbors began hitting metal containers with spoons from inside their homes; it was the subtle but unmistakable clatter of government protests. A recent demonstration in eastern Cuba that began with the sound of pottery and ended with citizens burning the local Communist Party headquarters resulted in dozens of arrests.

Still, the voice encouraged Taboada.

“It seems as if the Cuban people finally have a sense of hope for freedom,” he said.

Sometimes he argues with his neighbors about what this freedom would look like.

“It doesn’t matter which party governs,” a neighbor told him as he stood on the sidewalk to escape the darkness of their home as the power outage dragged on. “What matters to me is how I will feed my family.

“The important thing is the economy,” he continued. “We need a capitalist economy, I don’t care what the party is.”

A man enters his home past a fading mural of Che Guevara

“We need more of this,” he said. “If communism continues, there will still be political prisoners. People will still be tortured.”

People love your son. “I can’t stand the thought of another mother having to endure what I went through,” she said.

He is allowed to visit Duannis, who has gone on hunger strike several times, on a weekly basis. He said he was tortured and lost the sight in one eye.

Nelson Mandela, who fought for Cuba’s independence from Spain, and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and asked José Martí to bring him his books.

He said he developed political awareness that one day he could exercise when Cuba was free.