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HAVANA (AP) — Caribbean correspondent Dánica Coto returned to Cuba in late January, more than three years after her last visit to the island.
The landscape and lives in Cuba are now very different, and more changes are anticipated since the fallout of the U.S. attack on Venezuela, Cuba’s strongest ally, has yet to be fully felt.
This is an interview of Coto with Associated Press editor Laura Martínez.
I’m struck by the amount of garbage piling up in corners at popular tourist spots, and by the occasional Cuban wearing neatly pressed clothes rummaging through it. I observed one clean-cut man step into a pile of soggy rubbish, grab a small plastic container, fish for its lid and walk away with his find.
Fuel is hard to come by, and equipment including tractors and garbage trucks are breaking down, with crews unable to find the necessary spare parts.
I’ve also noticed that Havana’s beautiful architecture is crumbling more than ever. Once bright facades ranging from baroque to art nouveau are slowly being reduced to rubble in some areas.
At nighttime, the skyline is now largely black, with chronic outages, programmed and non-programmed, sinking the capital and beyond into darkness.
Alternatively, I was pleasantly surprised to see a handful of dog owners in Havana. I saw Cubans waking up early to walk well-cared for dogs, with the smaller ones sporting T-shirts to protect them from a cold snap in late January.
It’s the smallest things that reveal the most. The upgraded hotel where I’m staying cuts flimsy napkins in half to save resources and occasionally offers very small dabs of butter when it’s available.
Meanwhile, it’s not uncommon for office buildings in Havana to lack toilet paper and for water to be cut by mid-afternoon.
A growing number of Cubans are turning to firewood and charcoal so they can cook, because not only are power outages common, but natural gas is not always available, and many cannot afford solar panels.
Fuel and natural gas are so scarce sometimes that a group of people living in the city have set up a makeshift fireplace outside their building to cook food.
I’ve also seen people scramble to rearrange schedules so they can spend several hours in line to buy gasoline. I’ve also observed people crowded outside banks, with Cubans telling me that there’s a cash deficit.
Cubans also have told me that they’ve seen an increase in disruption in communications, making it harder to call people or browse online.
They’re very much in self-sufficient mode. Cubans have a strong spirit, and many lived through the so-called Special Period, an economic depression that struck in the 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union. That period eased when Venezuela, under former President Hugo Chávez, became an ally.
Even before the U.S. attacked Venezuela, Cuba was struggling with severe blackouts, soaring prices and scarcity of basic goods. Experts say that a disruption in oil shipments from Venezuela and now Mexico could unleash a potentially catastrophic crisis, especially since U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday that would impose a tariff on any goods from countries that sell or provide oil to Cuba.
Overall, many Cubans I’ve interviewed have shrugged off what could be impending doom, with experts saying that the Trump administration aims to spark a popular uprising in hopes that a new government will be established. But Cubans have said they will not be manipulated by outside forces. Meanwhile, some are preparing even though they doubt an invasion is looming. Those who can afford it are installing solar panels, while others are growing their own produce.
It’s hard to say. The U.S. government is stepping up its rhetoric, with Trump asserting that Cuba is failing while U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau recently claimed that the “Castro regime is tottering…after 67 years of a failed revolution.”
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants, has said that the U.S. government seeks “the opportunity for a change in dynamic. That’s a country that’s been backward. It has no functional economy.”
Under Trump, the government once again designated Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism.
Meanwhile, the Cuban government has not budged or changed its defiant speech. Cubans are going about their business as they decry the U.S. embargo and try to find ways to subsist.
The slogan “Patria o muerte, venceremos!” (Homeland or death, we will overcome!) still rings clear in Cuba.
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