Elena Gutiérrez can send money from Washington to her grandmother in Havana. She cannot send electricity. She cannot keep the refrigerator running when another blackout spoils the food inside, make water flow from a dry faucet or guarantee that the cell tower will have enough power for her grandmother’s phone to ring.
Sometimes Gutiérrez calls and gets nothing.
“When we do connect, she is sitting in the dark in 90-degree heat with all her food spoiled,” said Gutiérrez, 34, a hospitality specialist who lives in Columbia Heights. “I work all day in D.C. sending money, but what good is cash when the stores are empty and there is literally no power to pump water?”
More than 1,000 miles from Havana, Cuba’s unraveling has entered kitchens, workplaces and family conversations across the Washington region. Relatives here are trying to move money, medicine and necessities onto an island where fuel is scarce, blackouts can swallow hours or days, inflation has battered pensions and salaries, and a crippled electrical system has turned ordinary routines into daily calculations.
At the same time, some of the decisions that could make life harder or easier for those families are being made only blocks from where Gutiérrez works.
President Donald Trump has tightened the economic vise on Cuba, targeting oil, financial channels and government-linked enterprises as his administration tries to force concessions from Havana. Cuban officials say talks with Washington have effectively frozen. Inside Cuba, a government that spent generations restricting private capitalism is now opening portions of its economy to it, searching for money and investment as the country sinks deeper into crisis.
For Washington’s Cuban community, there is little agreement over whom to blame.
One side sees an exhausted Communist government finally confronting the consequences of decades of repression, central control and economic failure. The other sees Washington deliberately squeezing a population already struggling to keep food cold, hospitals operating and buses moving.
Gutiérrez sees her grandmother sitting in darkness.
“It feels like a slow-motion catastrophe,” she said, “and we are completely helpless watching it from here.”
‘It’s Time for Real Change’
Cuba’s problems now reach nearly every corner of daily life. Fuel shortages and repeated electrical failures have disrupted internet and telephone service, garbage collection, water delivery, transportation and businesses. Schools preparing for another academic year have struggled with teacher shortages and inadequate supplies. Factories cannot reliably operate when electricity disappears.
The electrical grid has become one of the clearest measures of the country’s deterioration. Aging generating plants repeatedly break down. Cuba lacks enough fuel to keep other facilities operating at capacity. Years of insufficient investment have left little margin when another plant fails.
Food can spoil before electricity returns. Water pumps stop. Cell service disappears. Businesses close their doors because equipment cannot operate.
Carlos Miranda, 61, an Arlington nonprofit director and human rights advocate, rejects the argument that Washington created the disaster.
“The energy crisis is a result of decades of systemic mismanagement, not just external pressure,” Miranda said. “The people banging pots in the streets of Havana are screaming for freedom.”
Miranda points to demonstrations in Cuba and protests outside the Cuban Embassy in Washington as evidence of something larger than frustration over electricity. Cubans have repeatedly taken to the streets demanding food, power and political freedom, while the government continues to imprison opponents and restrict dissent.
“What we are seeing with the protests outside the Cuban Embassy and on the island is the final collapse of a failed dictatorship,” Miranda said.
He wants Washington to continue pressuring Cuba’s leaders while creating ways to deliver assistance directly to citizens and political prisoners.
“Washington needs to keep the pressure on the regime while finding direct ways to support the citizens and political prisoners who are dying for basic human rights,” Miranda said. “It’s time for real change.”
Restrictions in Cuba
Trump has shown little interest in easing that pressure.
Since returning to the White House, his administration has restored and expanded restrictions on Cuba, including measures aimed at government officials, military-linked businesses, financial activity and energy. Cuba remains on the State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism, a designation with broad consequences for banking, investment and international transactions.
The administration has also gone after Cuba’s access to oil, one of the commodities the island can least afford to lose.
In June, Washington sanctioned Unión Cuba-Petróleo, Cuba’s state-owned oil company. The administration has accused Cuban leaders of protecting the government and military while ordinary citizens bear the consequences of shortages.
Havana says Washington is helping create the suffering it then cites as proof of Cuban government failure.
Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez has accused the United States of intensifying economic pressure while offering little through diplomatic contacts. Cuban officials say restrictions on fuel, finance and commerce have made an already dangerous economic situation considerably worse.
“The U.S. Secretary of State continues to punish Cuban companies with the deliberate purpose of harming our economy and prevent the government of Cuba from guaranteeing basic services for the population, which are already faced with a critical situation as a result of the blockade,” Rodriguez wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. “He is hindering, in particular, the transportation of containers carrying foodstuffs, medicines and medical devices, most of them purchased by Cuban private micro, small and medium size enterprises.”
The political hostility comes at an extraordinary moment inside Cuba.
After decades of placing the state between private businesses and much of the outside economy, Havana is preparing to give entrepreneurs greater freedom to import and export goods directly. Foreign investors would receive greater latitude to invest in Cuban private businesses and cooperatives, and additional changes are designed to attract outside capital.
The reforms are part of a package of 176 economic measures approved as the government searches for a way to generate money, production and investment.
For a government born from a revolution that nationalized private businesses and made state control a defining principle, the shift is substantial.
Cuba legalized self-employment in 1993 and has periodically expanded and restricted private business since then. Small and medium-sized private companies gained broader legal recognition beginning in 2021. The newest changes would push the opening further by reducing the government’s role in some foreign trade and investment.
They also expose how desperate the economic situation has become.
Private companies may soon have greater freedom to import merchandise, but ships and trucks require fuel. Businesses can receive greater authority to operate, but machinery needs electricity. Foreign investors can be invited in, but they must be persuaded to put money into a country where basic infrastructure is failing.
Tourism, long one of Cuba’s most important sources of foreign currency, has weakened. Inflation has crushed purchasing power. Transportation has become increasingly unreliable. Families depend heavily on money and supplies sent from abroad.
Mateo Silva, 26, a student activist and community organizer in Adams Morgan, said Washington cannot separate its campaign against Cuba’s government from what happens to the people living under it.
“You cannot choke off an entire island’s fuel supply with a strict oil blockade and then act surprised when the power grid fails and hospitals suffer,” Silva said. “The current administration’s sanctions are cruelly targeting the most vulnerable civilians, not the people in power.”
Caught Between Two Governments
That argument has divided Cuban Americans and Cuba policy advocates for generations.
Washington first imposed a partial trade embargo in 1960. The United States broke diplomatic relations with Havana the following year, and President John F. Kennedy expanded the embargo in 1962.
More than half a century later, President Barack Obama and Raúl Castro attempted to break the cycle. The two governments announced a normalization effort in 2014, diplomatic relations were restored and embassies reopened in 2015.
Trump reversed much of that opening during his first presidency and resumed the pressure campaign after returning to office.
Now Cuba is loosening some of its own economic restrictions while Washington tightens American ones.
Families are caught between the two governments.
For Cubans living around Washington, the consequences are measured less by diplomatic statements than by unanswered phone calls, spoiled groceries, missing medicine and money that buys less every month. Political arguments over communism, sanctions and regime change become much more immediate when an elderly relative is waiting for electricity to return.
Silva said Washington should consider those people before deciding how much harder it can squeeze Havana.
“Our coalition in D.C. is demanding an immediate end to the energy embargo,” Silva said. “If Washington truly cared about human rights and stopping the migration crisis, it would let fuel and medical convoys reach the people without political interference.”
