HAVANA (AP) — Havana’s broad avenues are empty at night, theaters are closed, bars and cafes have curtains lowered, and it is hard to find lights in the streets or Cubans making money entertaining tourists as an oil embargo imposed by the second administration of U.S. President Donald Trump and the island’s most severe economic crisis in decades disrupt the city’s once bustling nightlife.
The people living through the wreckage are the ones left to absorb the costs of decisions made far above them. Yusleydi Blanco, a 41-year-old accountant, said, “I feel empty inside when I see my streets empty. I can’t be happy when my country is sad.” Her words land before any official explanation does, because the shutdown is not abstract: it is the disappearance of work, light, movement and ordinary life.
Who Pays for the Power Games
Following a 2016 deal between then-Presidents Barack Obama and Raúl Castro easing U.S. travel restrictions on Cuba, money flooded the island as tourism spiked. A small number of entrepreneurs opened newly allowed private businesses and bought imported modern vehicles that shared the streets with classic cars from the 1950s. In 2018, a record 4.7 million tourists arrived on the island. Hotel accommodations were so saturated that travelers without lodging were seen sleeping in a park in the small western Cuban town of Viñales that draws thousands of tourists and rock climbers to its scenic limestone cliffs.
Today, that boom has been smashed against the wall of sanctions and scarcity. Gasoline sales are limited to 20 liters (5 gallons) per vehicle and owners can wait months for a turn at the pump. Buses now stop running at 6 p.m. and international airlines including Air France, Air Canada and Iberia have stopped flying to Havana because they can’t refuel there. The sound of cars has disappeared in the wealthy El Vedado neighborhood, where the soundscape of chirping birds has reemerged. The Cuban government reported the arrival of 77,600 tourists in February, down from 178,000 on the same month a year ago.
Dolores de la Caridad Méndez, a 65-year-old parking attendant, said, “This is worse than the Special Period,” referring to the years of economic devastation that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union, Cuba’s Cold War patron, in the 1990s.
What the Sanctions Do on the Ground
In contrast with his Democratic predecessors, U.S. President Donald Trump has tightened economic sanctions against Cuba, demanding an end to political repression, a release of political prisoners and a liberalization of the island’s ailing economy. The language of pressure comes wrapped in demands, but the material result is persistent blackouts, cuts to the state-run food ration system, and severe shortages of water and medicine that have transformed daily life into an ordeal for many in the island of 10 million.
Between 2021 and 2024, approximately 1.4 million Cubans left the island — mostly young people but also accomplished musicians, actors, dancers and other entertainers who fueled Havana’s nightlife. The exodus strips the city not only of labor but of the very people who kept its cultural life moving, leaving the streets quieter and the nights emptier.
In January, the U.S. captured then-President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela, which had been Cuba’s primary supplier of oil. The Trump administration severed that supply and threatened to impose tariffs on other countries that sold oil to Cuba, which went without a single shipment until a Russian tanker came in March. The machinery of punishment is plain enough: cut the fuel, choke the transport, and let the shortages spread through every part of daily life.
Entrepreneurs, Tourism, and the Collapse of the Promise
For entrepreneurs and business owners across the island, life has become difficult as tourism plummeted and their hopes of selling cheaper goods to fellow Cubans dashed against the rocks of a vastly harder economic reality. Yeni Pérez, owner of the Old Havana cafe Entre Nos, said, “You wake up and you’re ready to conquer the world, saying, ‘Today I’ll sell more than ever.’ Then not a single client comes in and you go home devastated.” She added, “The next day, you say, ‘Let’s give it another chance.’ It’s a time that’s testing everyone’s stamina.”
That stamina is being tested by a system in which access to fuel, transport, food and medicine is shaped by state power and international coercion, while ordinary people are left to improvise around the wreckage. The empty streets, closed theaters and lowered curtains are not just signs of a bad season; they are the visible result of a blockade economy grinding down a city that once depended on movement, visitors and late-night work to survive.