Cuba is experiencing its worst humanitarian crisis since the late 19th century, when its war of independence and the recriminations it provoked from Spanish colonial authorities devastated the country. Day-to-day challenges faced by Cubans are even worse than those experienced during the difficult years of the “special period” after 1991 when a collapsing Soviet Union suspended critical economic support. That is the assessment of Danny Roque, S.J., in Havana.

Cubans have experienced power cuts and hunger during previous crises, Father Roque, a member of the social apostolate for the Jesuit Caribbean Province, reports in a text exchange over WhatsApp, but things are far worse now. Garbage collects on the streets of Havana, power outages interrupt critical care at hospitals, food costs are out of control and no one knows when the suffering of everyday Cubans may end.

The Trump administration follows a “tough Cuba policy” that breaks with recent efforts toward rapprochement supported by the Catholic Church, with the aim of overturning the Cuban revolution by year’s end. After the United States deposed Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro in January, the White House applied a deeper squeeze on Cuba’s political leaders, exacerbating the island’s difficulties.

With greater influence over Venezuela’s current head of state, Delcy Rodríguez, U.S. President Donald Trump pressed for the end of discounted oil shipments to Cuba, and now the island nation just 90 miles off the U.S. coast has been enduring a near-complete energy catastrophe. Mr. Trump had already tightened restrictions on trade and tourism with Cuba that track back to the beginning of the U.S. economic embargo on Cuba in 1962.

“Hopelessness predominates” in Cuba, Father Roque says. The island’s economic and energy woes have been made far worse by Trump administration policies, but the suffering and despair “predates the arrival of Donald Trump to the presidency.”

“Before that there was already a fuel crisis, there were already economic needs, there were already thousands of people going hungry, thousands of people without access to medicines, the streets full of garbage, rickety buildings with their owners not having the economic capacity to rebuild them.”

The embargo contributes to the suffering, but it “is not the only cause,” he says. “A socialist model that has not worked anywhere at any time also has a high dose of responsibility.”

As signs of crisis mounted in recent years, instead of responding to the nation’s civic needs, the government continued to direct state resources into the tourism industry, according to Father Roque, building hotels “that today are empty because no one comes.”

Blaming Trump?

It is not clear how ready the Cuban people are to assign the blame for their suffering to the Trump administration or Cuba’s communist leaders. After a large-scale clampdown against political expression in 2021, most are afraid to speak their minds, Father Roque says.

But by the reckoning of Archbishop Thomas Wenski of Miami, “if the midterms were held in Cuba, Trump would probably win decisively.” Unable to openly criticize the government and bereft of a strong political infrastructure to launch an opposition movement, “they’re waiting for [Trump] to solve their problems,” the archbishop says. That may not reflect the wisest long-term course of action, he worries.

The church, he says, is seeking a “soft landing” to the ongoing crisis and a process of national reconciliation among Cubans and the members of the nation’s vast diaspora. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, together with Cuba’s episcopal conference, continues to support improved bilateral trade and political relations between the United States and Cuba as the best and most humane path forward.

But the Trump White House has taken a different tack, reversing the movement toward normalization during the Obama and Biden administrations that had been facilitated by Vatican diplomats and establishing an undeclared naval blockade around Cuba on top of the trade embargo.

The president has even made some remarks about a Maduro-style intervention, noting his conviction that Cuba’s decades-long experiment with socialist government was on the verge of collapse.

Humanitarian needs in Cuba “remain acute and persistent,” Francisco Pichón, the U.N. resident coordinator in Cuba, reported on May 1. “They are not resolved by limited fuel deliveries from abroad. While any additional supply may provide temporary relief, it is insufficient in scale and fails to address the structural constraints affecting essential sectors.”

According to Mr. Pichón, four months into Cuba’s deepening energy crisis, “the consequences are no longer abstract: they are visible in the rhythm of daily life. Streets fall silent before night has fully set in. Hospitals scale back operations. Small businesses close due to a lack of supplies. At dawn, exhaustion shows on people’s faces after long nights without electricity.”

He reports that thousands of surgeries have been postponed nationwide. “Pregnant women face irregular access to prenatal care. Newborns dependent on incubators or ventilators are at risk when power fails. Patients undergoing dialysis, cancer treatment or managing chronic illnesses depend on electricity not as a convenience but as a lifeline.”

In a statement released on May 13, the U.S. State Department reiterated an offer to provide $100 million in direct humanitarian assistance to Cuba. But the aid is contingent on distribution “in coordination with the Catholic Church and other reliable independent humanitarian organizations,” circumventing the Cuban government.

According to the statement, the United States seeks “meaningful reforms to Cuba’s communist system, which has only served to enrich the elites and condemn the Cuban people to poverty…. The decision rests with the Cuban regime to accept our offer of assistance or deny critical living-saving [sic] aid and ultimately be accountable to the Cuban people for standing in the way of critical assistance.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters that he discussed that offer with Pope Leo during their meeting on May 7. So far, according to Mr. Rubio, Cuban officials have declined to accept the assistance under the State Department’s conditions.

Helping those left behind

Suffering the most now are Cuba’s elderly, Father Roque says, left behind by family members who have fled the island.

Over the last five years, “some researchers estimate that between 18 and 20 percent of the population left the country,” he says. “Most [were] young, and this has left behind a considerable number of elderly people who worked all their lives and must survive on pensions that rarely reach $10 a month.”

Food prices, he reports, are galloping past what elderly Cubans can afford.

As many as 1.8 million people have left Cuba since 2021 in the largest migration since the Castro revolution—more than 850,000 came to the United States. Some 110,000 of those immigrants had been granted humanitarian parole under the Biden administration and now face the possibility of deportation to Cuba as the Trump White House continues its immigration clampdown.

A mass return of Cuban immigrants will surely only add to the chaos on the island. Exacerbating already difficult circumstances, Cuba is still grappling with the impact of Hurricane Melissa, which devastated eastern Cuba in October 2025.

Emergency disaster aid then reached Cubans through the Archdiocese of Miami, Caritas Internationalis and Catholic Relief Services, among other groups, and those church entities continue to deliver what assistance they can.

Father Roque describes the Cuban socialist model as bankrupt and its leadership ideologically and practically paralyzed. While most refrain from directly criticizing the government, what he does hear frequently expressed is the belief that “the worst thing that can happen now is that nothing happens.”

“In Cuba there can be no real transformation if there is no change in the political, economic and social system,” Father Roque says, “but right now, the people are not able to promote this—not only do they live under repression, there are no democratic mechanisms in which they can promote some kind of change.”

“On the other hand, the country is bankrupt and light years away from the business, technological and financial knowledge that allows a minimum of development.” He suggests that for a transition to succeed, the Cuban diaspora has to become involved.

“If I were to leave anyone out of decision-making, it would be precisely those who have been part of the current Cuban government,” he says. “Honestly, I am afraid of any kind of change like the one in Venezuela, that they negotiate with someone from the government and that the same party or those who have done so much damage to the country remain governing, it would be regrettable.”

Despite Father Roque’s misgivings, Archbishop Wenski wonders if the Venezuela option represents a viable way forward. He believes a transition in Cuba is inevitable; the question is how to manage it in a way to avoid “a hard landing that would result in a lot of collateral damage and violence.”

Cuba’s political transition has to be accompanied by national reconciliation if it is to avoid score-settling and social chaos, Archbishop Wenski says. What all parties should seek to avoid is a period of chaos and recrimination that pits Cuban generations and neighbors against each other.

Many Cubans are concerned about a Venezuela-style fix that removes figureheads but leaves the party apparatus in place to run the government and civic services. That outcome is not perfect, Archbishop Wenski allows, noting that in Venezuela, “the same basic people that were running the country are still running the country.”

But in Venezuela, oil is being produced and sold, and the economy is gradually improving. As it does, he argues, an opportunity arises to allow “the political temperature” to go down. “And then you can have an election that won’t be so divisive,” avoiding Manichean choices that will perpetuate tensions. That could be an option for Cuba as well, Archbishop Wenski suggests.

Opinion among the members of the Cuban diaspora in the United States is no longer monolithic, according to the archbishop. An older generation of emigres from the 1960s with fewer direct family ties to Cuba is perhaps most intransigent about cooperation with Cuba’s government, preferring a hard line. But younger Cubans who have arrived from the 1990s onward are intimately connected to people in Cuba, aware of their suffering and often providing a lifeline in remittances to family left behind.

“So from the older generation that doesn’t have many ties left on the island—except for nostalgic remembrance of what they lost—and the newer generation that still has family members there, there’s a big difference on what the [U.S.] policies could be or should be,” Archbishop Wenski says.

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