Cuba’s Triple Crisis: Power, Fuel, and the Washington Factor
Ujasusi Blog’s Caribbean Desk | 02 April 2026 | 0325 BST
Cuba is confronting one of the most severe governance and humanitarian crises in its modern history, driven by a convergence of US economic pressure, internal power fragmentation, and infrastructure collapse. The island’s leadership structure, long opaque to outside observers, is now under direct external pressure to reconfigure — with Washington actively identifying which Cuban power brokers it can work with and which it wants removed.
The Fuel Blockade and Its Human Cost
The immediate catalyst for the current crisis is a de facto US oil blockade that has pushed Cuba’s already fragile energy infrastructure past its operational limits. Cuba imports the bulk of its oil to generate electricity and run public transport. Since January 2026, fuel shipments have effectively ceased following two sequential US actions: on 11 January, the Trump administration announced the termination of Venezuelan oil and funding flows to Cuba after US military operations in Venezuela; on 29 January, an executive order threatened tariffs against any country supplying Cuba with fuel.
The effect has been near-total. In March alone, Cuba experienced two island-wide blackouts alongside persistent regional outages. Residents of Havana face up to 15 hours daily without electricity; rural areas have endured outages exceeding 24 consecutive hours. A single Russian tanker carrying 730,000 barrels arrived in Havana in late March — the only fuel shipment to reach the island in months — and its adequacy in addressing the scale of the shortage remains doubtful.
The humanitarian consequences are documented and worsening. Water systems and food distribution networks are disrupted. Hospitals are limiting surgeries. Public transport has contracted sharply. Infant mortality is rising, attributed by Cuban doctors to staff unable to reach work, sanitation failures from absent cleaning personnel, and shortages of prenatal vitamins and infant milk. The United Nations has warned of a possible humanitarian collapse. A 2025 study in The Lancet Global Health estimated that economic sanctions of this type generate 564,000 excess deaths annually across affected populations globally — a figure that contextualises the Cuban situation within a broader documented pattern of sanction-related mortality.
Trump has hinted at military action against Cuba, stating publicly that “Cuba is next” following US operations in Venezuela and Iran, though analysts assess major military action as unlikely while the Iran conflict remains active and costly.
Who Actually Holds Power in Cuba
Understanding the crisis requires disaggregating Cuba’s formal governmental structure from its actual power architecture. Miguel Díaz-Canel is Cuba’s president and secretary-general of the Communist Party of Cuba — the constitutionally designated “leading force of the state and society.” In formal terms, he sits at the apex of both party and government. In operational terms, analysts are united in assessing his authority as significantly constrained.
The real power in Cuba operates through two overlapping structures. The first is the Castro family network, anchored by former President Raúl Castro, whose political influence has not diminished with his formal retirement. The second is GAESA — the military-controlled economic conglomerate that controls approximately 60 per cent of the Cuban economy. These two structures are not separate: GAESA is deeply embedded within the revolutionary family’s sphere of influence, and the individuals most credibly positioned to succeed Díaz-Canel are those with roots in both.
Cuba’s 2019 constitution provides a formal succession mechanism. If the president resigns, is removed, dies, or is deemed unable to continue, Vice President Salvador Valdés Mesa assumes the role temporarily, with the National Assembly subsequently appointing a permanent successor. But analysts are consistent in noting that removing Díaz-Canel would not constitute regime change — the institutional apparatus governing Cuba would remain intact regardless of who occupies the presidency.
The Three Succession Candidates
Three figures have emerged in analytical assessments as credible successors, each representing a different institutional logic.
Oscar Pérez-Oliva Fraga is a great-nephew of Raúl Castro who has undergone rapid institutional elevation — from Minister of Foreign Trade and Investment in May 2024 to Deputy Prime Minister by October of the same year. His years inside GAESA give him the military-economic credentials the Cuban system requires of its leadership. He carries Castro bloodlines without the Castro name, enabling the regime to present a technocratic image internationally. He has also fronted initiatives allowing Cuban diaspora members to invest domestically — positioning him as the public face of a cautious economic opening. Analysts caution, however, that his GAESA origins make genuine structural reform under his leadership unlikely.
Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro — known as “Raulito” — is former President Raúl Castro’s grandson. He has served as his grandfather’s bodyguard and as head of Cuba’s equivalent of the US Secret Service. He has emerged as a key interlocutor in US-Cuba negotiations, with reports indicating he has been a direct contact for US Secretary of State Marco Rubio. His value is as a trusted conduit between the Castro inner circle and Washington rather than as a governing figure. Analysts are explicit that he lacks the formal qualifications, institutional position, and military standing required to lead a transition — his role is transactional rather than executive.
Roberto Morales Ojeda represents the conventional institutional succession path. A former public health minister and Deputy Prime Minister under both Raúl Castro and Díaz-Canel, he serves as Secretary of Organisation of the Communist Party’s Central Committee — a position that places him directly in the formal succession hierarchy. He is identified by most analysts as the conventional successor. His liability is the absence of a direct connection to GAESA and the military-economic apparatus, which may disqualify him in a crisis moment that demands the confidence of Cuba’s armed power structure.
Where Negotiations Go to Die
The US-Cuba negotiating dynamic sits within a structural contradiction that has persisted for decades. Washington demands political and economic reform as a precondition for lifting sanctions; Havana demands sanctions relief as a precondition for reform. Neither position has moved in any durable direction. The Trump administration has signalled it may accept Díaz-Canel’s removal as a sufficient concession to ease pressure — echoing the Venezuela model in which Nicolás Maduro was displaced while the governing apparatus remained. Cuba’s Vice Foreign Minister has publicly and categorically rejected any such proposal.
The gap between what the US can legally and politically offer and what Cuba’s leadership is willing to concede is, as one analyst put it, precisely where negotiations go to die. Military action cannot be ruled out once the Iran conflict resolves, but coercive regime change against a government structurally designed to survive its figurehead carries operational risks Washington has not publicly acknowledged. Cuba has spent six decades constructing an institutional architecture that distributes power below the presidency — making the presidency itself, paradoxically, the most expendable part of the system.