Havana, Cuba — The Cuban man sidled up next to me on the street whispering as if he were sharing a long-held secret.
“Let the Americans come, let Trump come, it’s time to get this over with,” he said in a barely audible voice.
This is dangerous talk in Cuba — and especially at a time when a US president is threatening Cuba in a way we have not seen since the Cold War.
I looked around to see if anyone else was listening to these incendiary comments and if my cameraman, who was shooting a story with me on the ongoing transportation crisis, was nearby to record what the man – a bicycle-taxi driver – was telling me.
“We can’t take it anymore,” he continued. “People can’t feed their families.”
In the more than six decades since Fidel Castro led a column of bearded revolutionaries into Havana and history books, the island has been in a state of perpetual crisis: failed CIA invasions, nuclear missile standoffs, mass exoduses. And now Donald Trump.
“Cuba is going to fall soon,” Trump told CNN’s Dana Bash on Friday, a statement that would seem like the rehashed bluster of many US presidents before him, except for how quickly and surgically the oil embargo implemented by Trump has broken Cuba’s beleaguered economy.
Already in his second term, Trump has ordered unprecedented attacks to remove the leaders of Venezuela and Iran from power. By his own admission, Cuba, a country that withstood decades of US economic sanctions and its own government’s failed policies, is next.
Unlike the 1962 missile crisis, there is no US naval blockade preventing ships from coming to the communist-run island, but the practical impact is the same. After the US attack on Venezuela and a pressure campaign on Mexico’s government, the flow of oil from Havana’s remaining stalwart allies has been cut off.
Many of the string of brand-new hotels built by the Cuban government at public expense sit empty or are closed. Employees have been sent home. Tourists have mostly vanished; there is no more jet fuel for the planes to take them home.
“Cuba is not alone,” is the Cuban government’s slogan. But the island seems as forlorn and abandoned as any time since the fall of the Soviet Union. Blackouts that once lasted hours now can go on for days. If the power comes flickering on for a few precious hours in the middle of the night, that’s when Cubans now rise to wearily cook and iron clothes.
During a recent 36-hour blackout, a group of men cooked a large pot over burning tree limbs on the sidewalk of one of Havana’s main stately avenues.
“We have returned to the Stone Age,” one called out to me in a disarmingly cheerful voice.
With no fuel, there are few cars on the road. As government rentals for tourists are the only cars that can with any regularity fill up at state-run gas stations, Cubans have taken to renting the so-called T-Plate vehicles – from which they siphon precious fuel to resell on the black market. A tank of gas goes for more than $300 on the black market at the moment – more than what most Cubans earn in a year.
People looking through piled-up trash for food has become a common sight; sometimes children.
Trump claims the Cuban government is desperate to make a deal to resolve the crisis, but the officials I talk to say the US will never again dictate terms to their island. This is still a country where every speech ends with the cry of “The homeland or death. We will be victorious!”
Still other Cubans I hear from are exhausted and hoping for a change – no matter what that change is.
When my cameraman finally reappears, I ask if the taxi driver wants to share his views for the story we are filming. He quickly walks off, not ready to air his complaints above a whisper, at least not yet.