Havana/The British multinational Unilever, which produces toiletries and cleaning products in the Mariel Special Development Zone in alliance with the state company Suchelhas evacuated its foreign workers from Cuba. This is stated by EFE based on two sources close to the company who requested anonymity, although Unilever itself did not respond to the questions from the Spanish agency.
Not only companies but also embassies, EFE assures this Thursday, are reviewing their contingency and evacuation plans as a result of the pressure from the United States on the Island after the operation carried out on January 3 in Venezuela that resulted in the capture of Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores.
The Spanish agency has contacted foreign diplomatic and business sources who have confirmed that concern has escalated in recent weeks due to the growing geopolitical uncertainty in the Caribbean and the possibility that the United States may even be preparing a military intervention.
“It is our responsibility to review the plans and prepare scenarios,” a diplomat in Havana told EFE.
“It is our responsibility to review the plans and prepare scenarios,” a diplomat in Havana told EFE who asked to protect her name “due to the sensitivity of the issue.”
About a dozen European and Latin American countries acknowledged to the Spanish agency that they are “updating their evacuation plans and their lists of nationals residing in Cuba, sometimes calling their citizens one by one to verify the data.”
Likewise, there are diplomatic legations preparing to endure long periods without electricity, fuel and water, eventualities that they understand may occur due to the combination of the current context of total crisis on the Island and growing American pressure.
A minority of embassies – which EFE does not identify – declared that they do not see the need to update their evacuation plans for now, although they did not rule out doing so at some point and stated that they remain alert to the possibility that in the future it will be necessary to activate emergency procedures.
Regarding the private sector, the agency assures, there are several subsidiaries of international companies that privately recognize that geopolitical uncertainty has led them to rethink their activity in Cuba with their parent companies.
The reasons they allege are a potential US military intervention, no matter how surgical (as was the case in Venezuela), and the impact on its activity of the country’s serious economic deterioration, especially with the increase in blackouts and critical fuel shortages.
If shipments of crude oil and derivatives from Venezuela and Mexico are permanently cut off, it will be unsustainable to maintain production
Some international firms – always under condition of anonymity – claim to have a reserve of fuel for their manufacturing operations, but advance that if shipments of crude oil and derivatives from Venezuela and Mexico are permanently cut off, it will be unsustainable to maintain production.
The United States has issued several direct warnings to Cuba since Maduro’s capture and has forced the cessation of the supply of Venezuelan oil to Havana, the island’s main source of fuel for more than 25 years. In the middle of that campaign, furthermore, and without explanations from the Government, Mexico canceled a crude oil shipment to the Island that was scheduled for January on a ship that finally will end up in Denmark.
This same week, the US president, Donald Trump, assured that, after the energy lock, Cuba is “about to fall”, and just yesterday, in a hearing before the Senatethe Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, said that he would “love” to see a “regime” change on the Island, although he clarified that this did not mean that Washington was going to provoke it.
Trump had previously gone further, pointing out that the only thing left to do in Cuba was to “go in and destroy the place,” to which Rubio added: “If I were in Havana, I would be worried, even a little.”
The US Undersecretary of State himself, Christopher Landauassured on Wednesday that Washington would like Cubans to be able to “exercise their fundamental freedoms” in 2026, in a clear reference to a political change on the island.
According to an exclusive published last Thursday by The Wall Street Journalwhat the US Administration is prioritizing is the search for a “traitor” within the Cuban regime with whom, as it is doing with Delcy Rodríguez in Venezuela, favors a transition to democracy on the Island.
