Havana, Cuba – Eight days before United States President Donald Trump signed an executive order threatening tariffs on countries that supply oil to Cuba, 26-year-old twins Sandra and Sabrina Gonzalez received a devastating email.
“Due to US regulatory requirements, Airbnb must disable certain listings. Unfortunately, this applies to your listing(s) in Cuba … all upcoming reservations will be canceled today,” reads the Jan. 21 email.
“By then, all our booking dates were blocked and all our reservations from January to April were automatically cancelled,” said Sandra, a resident of Havana.
Sandra’s family has run two bed and breakfasts through Airbnb since 2016, when Cuba’s tourism boomed after the historic normalization of relations under the administration of former US President Barack Obama. His business survived disruptions caused by Trump’s tourism restrictions and the COVID-19 pandemic during his first term.
After further research, the sisters discovered that only Cuban hosts with US bank accounts linked to their listings were affected.
In an attempt to salvage the situation, he tried to reach out to his guests directly – in violation of Airbnb’s rules – but was unsuccessful.
On February 8, Cuban officials announced that the island’s jet fuel supplies had run out. Canadian carriers Air Canada, Air Transat and WestJet, as well as Russia’s Rossiya and Nordwind, suspended flights to the island and arranged for the repatriation of citizens already in the country.
Canada and Russia are Cuba’s number one and third sources of tourism, respectively.
Hostels, bed and breakfasts and government hotels faced a surge in cancellations as travelers were unable to reach Cuba or reconsidered their plans amid Trump’s de facto oil embargo.
For Sandra and Sabrina, the setbacks didn’t end there. His work as a video producer also got interrupted, the shoot was canceled for the same reason. Now, both of them are going on different career paths.
“Suddenly finding yourself in a situation where you have to find a job you’re not used to with half the salary you made … it’s tough,” Sandra said.
No one benefits from living in these conditions
The streets of Havana have changed in the past few weeks. 1950s US cars – the city’s iconic taxis – have largely disappeared, leaving China’s electric tricycles alone struggling to keep up with demand.
On February 7, the Cuban government suspended fuel sales in local pesos and limited US dollar sales to 20 liters (5.3 gallons) per vehicle, creating a long waiting list on a Cuban online booking platform.
The sanctions are part of a nationwide contingency plan in response to the oil embargo. The plan includes decentralizing fuel imports and empowering any company, including private ones, to buy fuel abroad.
Meanwhile, private taxis, which have become the main means of transport for the paralysis of public transport, have soared and black market fuel has increased. Petrol is already selling for the equivalent of $8 per liter (about $30 per gallon), a 400 percent increase since the week that led to the January 3 kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro by US forces. Venezuela supplied 30 percent of the oil consumed by Cuba, under which in exchange for subsidized oil, the island sent thousands of Cuban doctors, nurses, teachers and other professionals to work in Venezuela.
Cuba’s recent actions go beyond fuel. Many state-sector employees have been moved to remote work, other workers have been reassigned, and the work week has been cut to four days. Non-essential surgeries have been suspended and college students have been sent home.
Cuban economist Daniel Torralbas says sectors that depend directly on energy, such as transportation and industry, will be hit the hardest. But all businesses – private and government-alike – are feeling the impact.
The island experienced a 16-hour blackout this week, and as of Thursday, less than half the country had its power back.
“This year has probably been the toughest for the Cuban economy since the revolution,” he said.
Torralbas sees only one clear winner within Cuba in the current crisis: “Businesses that offer solutions to the problems caused by the crisis, such as those that sell solar panels.”
This is benefiting people like 28-year-old Alejandro Candelaria. He spent the last six months as a courier and taxi driver on an electric motorcycle left behind by his brother before emigrating to Spain. Due to lack of fuel, the competition is thin and his income is high.
But Candelaria would not be victorious.
“No electricity, no water, no gas. It takes a toll on you mentally. Of course, I benefit from the lack of fuel, but living in these conditions does not benefit anyone,” he said.
Now you can go out, but you can’t move
On the night of February 5, shortly after Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel warned of “difficult times” on television, 20-year-old Rafael Mena received a WhatsApp message ordering him to leave his university as soon as possible.
“The news evoked a certain catharsis among the students,” said Mena, a journalism student who lives in Mayabeque, a province east of the capital, and at the University of Havana because the Cuban system allows universities to house students from remote or rural areas.
“The university residence was in a precarious state for days: the electricity transformer was broken, there was no water, and the daily hassles one endures are enough to make someone explode,” Mena said.
The next day, students began to return home, and within a week, many higher education institutions had already closed their doors.
The government’s contingency plan also introduced a “hybrid” class format for high school and university education.
According to official information received by Mena, students are expected to study remotely and download materials from institutions in their own communities, suspecting that “hybrid” may be little more than a euphemism in this context.
“This whole situation feels like during COVID. Back then, we were locked at home because going out would make us sick. Now we can go out, but you can’t really move around because it’s too expensive,” Mena told Al Jazeera.
This week, the US Treasury Department said it would allow the resale of some Venezuelan oil to Cuba for “commercial and humanitarian use.” But it’s unclear whether businesses will be able to pay those market rates.
Torralbas is not optimistic about the Cuban economy. The island’s GDP has shrunk by 15 percent over the past five years, while life expectancy, infant mortality, education and public health indicators have all worsened. He expects the government to be forced to implement more measures to survive the effects of the US oil embargo.
“Given the seriousness of the situation, there is no way to recover without structural change. We need fuel, food and foreign currency … and no external savior will come to provide everything Cuba needs – China, or Russia, or, of course, Venezuela, which has changed a lot since January 3.”
(tags to translate)Economy
