Vera Bergengruen (2:11)

Ultimately, they want regime change at the very top. What the Trump administration wants is for Cuba's government to be dismantled, for all of it to go away.

Jessica Mendoza (2:25)

Welcome to the Journal, our show about money, business and power. I'm Jessica Mendoza. It's Thursday, March 19th. Coming up on the show is Cuba on the brink of collapse?

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Jessica Mendoza (3:55)

Cubans have lived under tough conditions for a long time. The country's economy has been devastated by the communist government's mismanagement and a decades old US embargo. To get by, Cuba depends on tourism, remittances from Cubans living abroad, and the services the government sells to friendly nations. Cuba has also kept trade relationships with some countries like Russia and Mexico, and until recently, Cuban One of its biggest and most important partners had been Venezuela. In 1994, socialist leader Hugo Chavez visited Cuba for the first time five years before he became Venezuela's president. He delivered a speech in Havana in front of Fidel Castro

Vera Bergengruen (4:39)

Latino Americanos.

Jessica Mendoza (4:41)

In his speech, Chavez described Cuba as a bastion of Latin American dignity and he said Venezuela's duty was to follow Cuba's lead and to support the communist regime.

Vera Bergengruen (4:52)

Cuba es humber icomotal ay que segurla

Jessica Mendoza (5:02)

y comotal hayta yo. When Chavez became Venezuela's president in 1999, his government quickly turned on the oil spigot exporting fuel to Cuba to feed its power grid. And that system stayed in place for years until this January.

Vera Bergengruen (5:25)

The US bombed the capital of Caracas and other locations in a lightning military operation in the early hours of the morning local time, which lasted the United States, in a very brazen military operation, went into Caracas, took out Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro and his wife, shipped them back to the US and installed his vice president as a kind of interim leader who was going to give them what they wanted. In a stunning act of regime change, the US military captured and brought Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro to US soil, and one of the biggest asks was to stop supplying Cuba with oil. So that was the first blow.

Jessica Mendoza (6:05)

The next blow came later that month. In late January, Trump issued an executive order threatening to impose tariffs on any nation that sells oil to Cuba. That scared off Cuba's remaining oil suppliers. The order also declared Cuba a national security threat. The island is just 90 miles from Florida, and the administration says it gives us adversaries, including Russia, China, Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas a foothold right in the United States backyard for A lot of

Vera Bergengruen (6:35)

people, and for a lot of illegal experts we've spoken with, you know, that doesn't really hold water. And there's a lot of international experts and also human rights groups who say that this is an illegal blockade and that it's basically collective punishment of the population. But basically, in each of these moves, has been isolating the island further from the few other countries and allies who still try to keep it running.

Jessica Mendoza (6:58)

Right. And so that blockade effectively started in early January. What was the first sign that Cuba's economy was starting to crack from this crisis?

Vera Bergengruen (7:09)

For a long time, many people just didn't really notice because we've all been living for most of our lives knowing that there's an embargo, a US Embargo on Cuba. And if you follow Cuba, the headlines tend to always note, you know, rolling blackouts, lack of access to food, to medicine. It's chronic. So for many people, it didn't seem

Jessica Mendoza (7:27)

that different, but Vera says it is. The oil blockade has meant airlines can't refuel in Cuba, so they canceled flights. That's dried up Cuban tourism, one of the country's main sources of revenue. And once the blackouts intensified, things got worse for locals. Aid groups can't deliver food and supplies can't be distributed. Buses stop running, and without public transit, people can't get around or even go to work.

Vera Bergengruen (7:57)

Cuba has cut down the work week. At one point, it was four days. But they've basically reduced the number of days they expect people to work. In some cases, they have stopped schooling, universities have been shuttered, and they've, you know, again, the everyday rhythms that were still operating in Cuba, that were still functioning, have basically stopped. I think that's when people kind of realized, you know, this isn't just a crumbling economy. This is an entire country that is just effectively ground to a halt.

Jessica Mendoza (8:26)

And so that brings us to these demonstrations. You know, people sharing their discontent, banging pots and pans. What's the most striking moment when you felt things really hit a fever pitch?

Vera Bergengruen (8:39)

This weekend, an angry crowd of protesters went to the headquarters of the Communist Party in northeastern Cuba in a town called Moron, and they, you know, made a bonfire with the furniture. They set parts of it on fire. And it was this small riot in a town that had had no power for 30 hours. And that is a really remarkable sign of protest.

Jessica Mendoza (9:04)

The targeting of a Communist Party headquarters was an escalation, a rare act of frustration directed at the government.

Vera Bergengruen (9:12)

I mean, there's only been two periods of real protests in Cuba in the last couple of decades, which is really, really remarkable. The last one was in 2021 when we saw this kind of surge of especially youth protest, people like that. But you know, these expressions of unrest are really, really rare.

Jessica Mendoza (9:33)

The Trump administration says Cuba is ready to fall, but in the meantime, Cubans are caught in the middle.

Vera Bergengruen (9:40)

Even for a population used to suffering quite a bit of deprivation, they are realizing that it's not going to get any better. It's only going to get worse.

Jessica Mendoza (9:49)

Which begs the question, is Trump's pressure campaign working? That's after the.

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Jessica Mendoza (12:13)

Vera what is the status of the Cuban regime right now?

Vera Bergengruen (12:16)

U.S. officials when you speak with them, they say that the Cuban regime is the weakest. It's ever been, that it's incredibly fragile and that this is why they're seizing the opportunity to finally do their best to bruised this communist regime that they also blame for really brutal oppression. And, you know, basically everything that has gone wrong in the last 60 years on the island itself, the government remains firmly in control. And so this idea that you're going to be able to immediately turn Cuba from what it's gone through for the last 60 years into some kind of democracy is obviously going to take a lot more work. So for now, you know, we're not really seeing signs that the people are going to rise up and demand the kind of change that the United States is envisioning.

Jessica Mendoza (13:00)

A spokesperson for the State Department said that the country's communist regime is at fault for a lack of goods and services. They said that Cuba should make a deal and allow the United States to help the country. The Trump administration considers Cuba a foreign policy priority, especially after the January raid in Venezuela that captured Nicolas Maduro. But Vera says Cuba and Venezuela are very different from each other.

Vera Bergengruen (13:27)

In Venezuela, it's an oil economy. It was way more open. It had a civic society, it had well organized opposition movements and a position that, by all international accounts, won the 2024 election. So, you know, it had elections, but it is a really big priority for Trump. He's made the Western Hemisphere, you know, really an unusual focus point of his second term. He grew up in that era where Cuba and the Cold War dominated a lot of the American psyche. And some people have told us that you he wants to do what even John F. Kennedy couldn't do. They tried, you know, with the Bay of Pigs invasion to overthrow this regime back in the 60s. He's kind of seeing this as a legacy achievement to be able to leave office saying that, you know, communist Cuba is no more and that the US Is going to basically be, you know, its benefactor in that way.

Jessica Mendoza (14:23)

Meanwhile, Cuban officials have been in talks with Washington, and the regime has started to make small concessions. They've released prisoners and signaled a willingness to open the island to Cuban American investment in businesses. But for some on the US Side, it's not enough.

Vera Bergengruen (14:39)

The issue with all of this is that US Sanctions remain in place. The embargo remains in place. Most Americans are blocked from doing any kind of business with Cuba. So they're offering the kinds of things that would force the US to actually lift some sanctions in order to start improving those conditions. And so far, that is a complete no go for the hardliners who are running these negotiations. This is Secretary of State Marco Rubio. It's quite a few members of Congress who are either Cuban, American or who are very aligned with seeing political change in Cuba. For them, anything like that looks like appeasement. And they are very clear that they want a full uprooting of the political institutions. They want all of them gone, and only then are they willing to consider different kinds of negotiations.

Jessica Mendoza (15:26)

Vera, when you listen to the way Trump talks about Cuba, what does that tell you about how the administration sees the country?

Vera Bergengruen (15:34)

Trump has been saying for weeks, you know, that Cuba will fall. That's how he puts it. But also, you know, economically, he thinks like a real estate developer.

Donald Trump (15:42)

It's a beautiful island, great weather. They're not in a hurricane zone, which is nice for a change. You know, they won't be asking us for money for hurricanes every week.

Vera Bergengruen (15:51)

He's always speaking about the beautiful beaches and the beautiful landscapes and the beautiful weather. And so he's envisioning, you know, bringing Cuba back to where it's basically, the United States has quite a bit of economic sway over it. It gets what it wants out of the island. Of course, that is not an easy thing for the Cubans to be hearing, especially the Cuban government, and to be seen as agreeing to. So as far as we can tell, I mean, Trump seems to think that Cuba will collapse on its own, that this amount of pressure is going to lead the government to have no choice but to basically submit to whatever they want. When you hear the president talk about it, you can tell there's no doubt in his mind that this is going to be happening soon and that it's going to be easy.

Jessica Mendoza (16:32)

Is that actually what's panning out on the ground? I mean, this pressure is clearly destabilizing the country's economy. But is it working politically?

Vera Bergengruen (16:41)

One of the biggest questions we have and that we haven't been able to answer yet over the course of reporting on this is what is the day after planning. There's very little civic society. There isn't really an infrastructure for elections. There isn't an opposition movement that is powerful enough at the moment on the island. So, you know, who replaces this government? And this is a conversation that's been happening largely outside of Cuba. You know, it's happening in Miami. US Officials have been meeting with Cubans all over the Caribbean having these conversations, but no one's really been able to answer that. It's really unclear what comes to replacement.

Jessica Mendoza (17:21)

What about the people? I mean, you know, we talked about the riots and the burning of the Communist Party office in Moron. The pots and pans, the demonstrations. Could we see more of that? Do you think there will be more?

Vera Bergengruen (17:34)

You know, from speaking with people? I do think we'll see more protests. But this idea that the people are going to rise up and take back their government and the United States can just kind of look on and provide some support similar to what they've been saying in Iran really seems unlikely given that most people are just worried about survival right now. If Cuba really completely runs out of fuel by April, in two weeks or so, we really don't know what's going to happen next, whether the United States is going to have to loosen some of these restrictions in order to avoid starvation, in order to avoid hospitals having to completely shut down. In that case, the humanitarian toll would be blamed on the United States. And we really don't know what that's going to look like.

Jessica Mendoza (18:34)

That's all for today. Thursday, March 19th. Tomorrow, tune in to our third story from the fringes of the fertility industry. This time we're looking at the surrogacy industry's super users.

Donald Trump (18:47)

I do met a potential client. They wanted 200 kids.

Jessica Mendoza (18:51)

You had a client who said they wanted 200 kids? Yeah, that's tomorrow's episode. Don't miss it. The Journal is a co production of Spotify and the Wall Street Journal. Additional reporting in this episode from Jose de Cordoba and Deborah Acosta. If you like the show and want to connect with us behind the scenes, follow follow me on Instagram at Jessica Mendoza, thanks for listening. See you tomorrow.

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