By Claire Boobbyer, Adventure.com, June 24, 2026
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| Photo credit: Reuters.com |
Editor's note: There is a paucity of sources on how everyday life is for the Cuban people. The state-owned and run Cuban mass media do not report on it. Socialist media supportive of the Cuban revolution do not report on it. Reports from corporate media in the West, particularly the United States, are biased against the 1959 revolution and socialism. In this context, I am publishing the following report, shared by a Canadian socialist living in Cuba. It throws light on a misreporting of "food shortages" in Cuba. I have not edited the article.
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The US oil blockade has created huge geopolitical and
economic pressures for Cubans, leading to government advisories warning against
travel to Cuba. But while the island remains open for visitors, what is
everyday life like for local people and businesses reliant on tourism? Cuba
expert and frequent traveler Claire Boobbyer reports.
The last monthly pay cheque of 6,000 CUP (US$10; )[CUP is convertible peso to dollars at a fixed rate—ed.] Tania Rodríguez received for work at a foreign-managed hotel was in February. Speaking from her home in central Cuba, the university graduate says the government offered her replacement work as a hospital cleaner for 3,000 pesos a month (US$5). She declined.
Later, cleaning work at a beach hotel emerged, but it
meant sleeping on-site—not possible with elderly parents and a young child.
Rodríguez cooks on her patio with charcoal—a 20-liter bottle of gas on the
black market is unaffordable at 60,000 pesos (US$90). She’s emotional as she
relates how she sells clothes, shoes, sheets of wood lying around the house;
she’s contemplating selling a fridge and water tank to buy food. “We are going
downhill without any brakes,” she says. She credits her family’s survival to a
friend, a Canadian tourist she met years ago, who tops up her bank card.
An oil blockade imposed on January 29th by the Trump
administration has almost paralyzed Cuba. Blackouts hit islanders for 22-23
hours a day, fuel prices have shot up, and cross-country transport is
withering. Water supply is increasingly unavailable to many homes as water
pumps need a power supply, hospitals are struggling to function, and many
medicines are only available on the black market. The energy choke triggered
airlines to begin pulling out, and countries including the UK, Ireland,
Switzerland, and Australia banned non-essential travel to Cuba. In a shock
move, Canada, historically the source of most of the island’s visitors for
decades, repatriated its tourists in February.
In 2017, Cuba’s tourism sector generated
USD$3.3billion, 10 percent of the country’s GDP, writes Paolo Spadoni,
Associate Professor at Augusta University and co-author of a recent book, The Cuban Tourism Industry. Tourism
is a big player; it’s said that up to 500,000 Cubans are directly and
indirectly linked to the industry, relying on wages, revenue, and tips.
It feels like a different place today. At a poetry
reading last month at the Ojo del Ciclón cultural spot in Havana’s old quarter,
Urszula Abolik, a Polish American who’s been visiting Cuba for 12 years, was
one of just two tourists. “I’ve never seen Havana that quiet. These artists and
dancers … they still show up for their art, but it’s very hard for them right
now. You cry that Havana is like that.”
During Abolik’s two-week stay, she danced tango, stayed
in a B&B where the power never failed, moved around in local fixed-route
taxis and bicycle rickshaws, and saw small groups of tourists from China,
France, and Argentina. At a packed solar-powered club listening to the
charanga-style (Cuban dance music) Aragón Orchestra, Abolik was the only
foreigner, and the only diner at the superb Buena Vista Social Curry Club
during a set by acclaimed Cuban pianist José Portillo.
The
unfolding crisis in 2026 has deeper roots. The US Embargo against Cuba, imposed in 1962, has been tightened
over the years. In 2021, President Trump placed Cuba on a State Sponsors of Terrorism List, crippling its ability
to receive foreign aid and process financial transactions. The move nullified
the ESTA visa-waiver scheme for entry into the US too, for travelers who
visited Cuba on or after January 12th 2021. Over 67 years of the Castro family
rule, internal mismanagement of its centrally planned economy has
prevailed, COVID-19 further devastated tourism, from which it never fully recovered,
while over-investment in tourist hotels post-pandemic squeezed out services in
greater need.
This dismal picture is borne out by the figures. Between
January and April this year, the island recorded 328,608 visitors, a
56 percent drop against the same months last year. At Cuba’s tourism height, in
2017-18, a few years after President Obama normalized relations with the US and
eased travel restrictions, almost five million people visited for the rich
culture, nature, and beach resorts. With all this in mind, who is still
advocating for travel to Cuba?
In typical
circumstances, UK-based Cuba specialist tour operator Love Cuba sends
5,000-6,000 travelers to the island each year. But despite the UK’s Foreign
Commonwealth Development Office (FCDO) advising “against all but essential
travel to Cuba”, its CEO Damien O’Brien says about 20 people a month are
heading there with Air Europa, the only airline flying from mainland Europe,
with specialist insurance.
Love Cuba offers transfers to Havana hotels and the
all-inclusive beach resorts of Varadero, Cuba’s premier 13 miles of sand, two
hours east of Havana. Cuba’s state-owned hotels, a major source of revenue,
have historically been ringfenced, powered by generators, and with reliable
sources of food. As the electricity supply has been on the blink since
COVID-19, Cuba’s private entrepreneurs and new Micro, Small, and Medium-Sized
Businesses (Mipymes) have imported power storage systems such as EcoFlow—tapping
power from sockets or solar panels—to run businesses and homes.
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