Cuba’s decades-long economic crisis is deepening under the US fuel blockade the communist government calls ‘collective punishment’.
By Colin Cosier — SBS Dateline
Published 4 October 2026
Watch Dateline’s latest episode, Cuba: Inside the Blockade, on 6 October at 9.30pm AEST on SBS or SBS On Demand.
The hand-rolled cigar hardly leaves Alberto’s lips the entire time I’m with the farmer, but he takes it out to make his point:
“This is a very difficult crisis,” he says.
“I’m 65 years old. I’ve lived here for a long time, and I’ve never seen a crisis worse than the one we’re facing now. Never.”
Tobacco might be one of Cuba’s most famous and important exports, but even the Cuban cigar is feeling the heat of the United States oil embargo that has starved the country of fuel all year.
Alberto’s tobacco farm lies in the UNESCO World Heritage-listed Viñales Valley. The stunning scenery is usually a tourist magnet. Only visitors are another casualty of the fuel crisis.
But it’s the lack of fuel to run his irrigation pumps to grow enough tobacco and food on his farm that’s causing Alberto the most grief.
“I can’t plant anything. I have to buy rice at any price just to eat,” he says.
‘Down to fumes’
Following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War in 1991, Cuba relied on Venezuelan oil.
But after US forces captured Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro in January, US President Donald Trump restricted oil shipments to Cuba and tightened sanctions on key sectors of its economy, declaring the country’s communist regime a threat to US national security.
Russia, Cuba’s close ally, sent one shipment of oil earlier this year, but other supplying nations such as Mexico were threatened by Trump with tariffs if they continued shipments.
The US has allowed some private fuel to be imported under a sanctions loophole designed for Cuban Americans to support family members on the island, but it’s not nearly enough.
Cuba’s own oil production is thought to not meet even half of its needs, so for most of this year it has had almost no outside fuel, and it has brought the country — already struggling from the effects of a decades-long US trade embargo — to its knees.
Cuba’s government has condemned the US blockade as an act of “collective punishment”.
Alberto used to earn a side income selling tobacco and lunch to international tourists visiting his picturesque farm. But today, only his friends and family visit. I’m the first foreigner to visit him this year.
Simply growing tobacco, he tells me, doesn’t pay well in communist Cuba.
“You hand 90 per cent over to the government and keep 10 per cent to smoke yourself,” he says of the local tobacco trade rules.
“They [the government] set the prices. They don’t pay enough. What they pay for tobacco is way too low. No one can live on that.”
The solo tourist
Reporters Without Borders calls Cuba “the worst country for press freedom in Latin America” and access for foreign journalists is restricted.
Walking around the capital Havana’s historic old town, it’s clear the city once thrived on tourism, but I feel like I’m the only foreign visitor here.
My hotel, one of the few still open in the city, tells me a German man is also visiting, but I don’t see him. At breakfast, I see only expat Cubans, Chinese businessmen, and airline staff.
Tourism was hugely important to Cuba’s economy, accounting for about 10 per cent of its gross domestic product.
Cuba welcomed a record 4.2 million international visitors in 2019, but numbers never reached these heights again after the COVID-19 pandemic.
Visitor numbers have plummeted after the US imposed an energy embargo. In the first half of this year, visitor numbers were reportedly down 62 per cent from the same period last year.
Major airlines stopped flying to Cuba after the government said they wouldn’t be able to refuel their planes in the country. The once constant stream of tourists from places such as Canada and Russia has dried up.
The most obvious telltale sign of the fuel crisis is a lack of cars — including the 1950s-era vehicles that symbolise Havana — on the streets. Buses have either stopped running or only run a few times a day.
Instead, electric or pedal-powered tricycles with bench seating for a few paying passengers are now popular.
Rubbish is the other sign that all is not okay. Huge piles of uncollected household waste litter many back streets.
Two women living next to a stinking pile that stretches the length of their block tell me that the city occasionally cleans it up, but the municipality doesn’t have enough fuel to service the trucks for regular rubbish collection.
I see people picking food scraps from the rubbish piles too. Locals tell me scenes like this were unheard of in Cuba a decade ago.
I see pharmacies without a single item on a shelf.
And the state-run stores that once served free, rationed goods like beans and rice to all Cubans are shut.
At night, much of Havana is plunged into darkness. Rolling blackouts have been a feature of the fuel crisis, with some reportedly exceeding 20 hours a day.
I walk the dark streets with a head torch. I hear generators buzzing away, powering a shop here and an apartment there. And battery-powered lamps dot the windows of many homes.
Three nationwide grid collapses have been reported this year.
Daily survival
On the top floor of her old apartment block, 87-year-old Marta has spent the morning collecting water in buckets. After five days without running water — there was no fuel to power the water pumps — she can finally take a shower.
Marta lives alone and supplements her pension by working at a local cultural centre. Her combined monthly income of 7,000 pesos is roughly $15.
This buys her bread, rice and mincemeat to eat.
“I have to start saving, otherwise I’ll starve to death,” she says.
“There are some elderly people who can’t afford bread.”
Despite her hardships, the Communist Party member blames the US for Cuba’s woes.
“We don’t have fuel because they won’t let it through,” she says.
“We can’t blame the [Cuban] state or the government. It’s the blockade.”
I ask her what she makes of Trump’s threat that after Venezuela and Iran, Cuba is next.
“He’s not going to do anything,” she says. “And besides, we Cubans are here to defend our home.”
The youth exodus
Younger Cubans, however, are leaving in droves. Long before the current fuel embargo, economic crises and political disenchantment drove mass exoduses.
In the past six years alone, it’s estimated that at least 1.6 million people left Cuba. That’s more than one in every 10 Cubans.
Claudia, 24, is also thinking of leaving. She says her childhood friends and relatives have gone abroad in search of a better life.
“I love my country. If we didn’t have all these internal problems and everything, I’d live here for the rest of my life. I don’t really want to leave,” she says.
Claudia was once a professional dancer, but her monthly wage of $5 was unlivable.
Today she makes about US$10 ($14) a day selling and delivering hardware tools on her bicycle.
For her, the source of Cuba’s problems is homegrown.
“I think the blockade that affects Cubans the most is the internal one,” she says.
“There may be many external problems facing us, but we haven’t been able to sort out what’s happening internally, and that is indeed up to us.”
Source: Colin Cosier, SBS Dateline, 4 October 2026.
Program: Dateline — Cuba: Inside the Blockade
Broadcast: 6 October 2026, 9.30pm AEST, SBS and SBS On Demand.
These photos by Lachlan Hurse did not form part of the Dateline program.