Cuba’s energy crisis exposes 60-year blockade’s systemic fuel shortages and global oil dependency
Original framing: “Cuba runs out of diesel and fuel oil” — Financial Times
The original framing omits Cuba’s indigenous and Afro-Cuban energy traditions, such as the use of bagasse (sugarcane waste) for bioenergy since the 1920s, and the role of Afro-Cuban spiritual practices in community resilience during shortages. It ignores historical parallels like the 1990s 'Special Period' when Cuba adapted to fuel scarcity through urban agriculture and bicycle transport, or Venezuela’s similar energy crises under U.S. sanctions. Marginalized voices—such as Black Cuban engineers developing solar microgrids in rural areas or women-led cooperatives managing energy cooperatives—are erased. Structural causes like the collapse of the Soviet trade bloc and the global shift to dollarized oil markets are also overlooked.
Medium structural omission detected in mainstream coverage.
The Financial Times narrative serves neoliberal and U.S. foreign policy interests by framing Cuba’s energy crisis as a failure of socialism, obscuring the role of the U.S. embargo (codified in the 1992 Torricelli Act and 1996 Helms-Burton Act) in restricting fuel imports. It centers Western energy markets and corporate supply chains, masking how sanctions weaponize scarcity to destabilize the Cuban government. The framing also privileges corporate media access and elite economic perspectives, sidelining Cuban experts and grassroots organizers who advocate for energy autonomy.
The embargo itself is a trickster—a policy that claims to 'promote democracy' while weaponizing scarcity to destabilize a government, embodying the absurdity of U.S. foreign policy. Cuba’s response, from bicycle taxis to solar-powered streetlights, mirrors the trickster’s ability to turn constraints into creativity, as described by Lewis Hyde in 'Trickster Makes This World.' The embargo’s contradictions (e.g., allowing food and medicine imports while blocking fuel) reveal the performative cruelty of sanctions, akin to the mythic Coyote’s self-defeating schemes.
Cuba’s diesel shortage is not a sudden failure but the culmination of 60 years of U.S.