Havana/In 2025, Cuba reached December exhausted, with the feeling of having lived a year too long for so little encouragement. The epidemiological crisis It exposed a health system trapped between material deterioration and citizen distrust. Hospitals collapsed in the middle of the arbovirus epidemic and the lack of medicines revealed that the country can no longer feign self-sufficiency or moral authority in public health management. Where before there was propaganda of medical power, today there are only rooms without doctors and patients who must resolve the supplies on their own.
Neither does he tourism – a former economic lifeline – was able to provide oxygen. The sustained drop in visitors dragged down jobs, reduced income and left rooms empty.
On the political level, continuity has been the regime’s main line of defense, in a context marked by the exile of activists and, in parallel, the deportation by the United States of migrants linked to the ruling party. The repression kept the pulse high, especially against the informal currency market and the digital site The Touchbecome a scapegoat for an economy that increasingly depends on the dollar.
The flight of athletes continued its course, a reflection of a country that is losing talent at the same rate as sports practice is sinking
The athlete escape continued its course, a reflection of a country that is losing talent at the same rate as sports practice and, with special drama, that of baseball. The blackouts, with several successive collapses of the national energy system, were more than just long daily hours without power: they became the daily metaphor of a political project that does not illuminate, but only extends the darkness around it. Not even the new photovoltaic parks They managed to alleviate the electrical crisis.
At the international level, Havana faced growing isolation and palpable nervousness in the face of Washington’s siege on the Cuban regime. Nicolas Maduroone of its last external pillars. The signals coming from Caracas anticipate turbulence and possible outcomes that could leave the Cuban leadership without one of its most strategic supports.
He Hurricane Melissa added a natural disaster to a year already marked by the wear and tear of institutions, incapable of caring for the victims, and the exponential growth of poverty, caused by rampant inflation, which essentially affects food prices. Protests over the lack of electricity and water became an increasingly direct expression of popular unrest. In parallel, the military conglomerate Gaesa consolidated its economic and financial control with the opening of dollar stores for food and basic products.
Without a reformist roadmap, the population observes the future like someone looking at the sea at night: they cannot see the coast, but they know that it exists.
By 2026, the scenario looks even darker. Without a reformist roadmap, the population observes the future like someone looking at the sea at night: they cannot see the coast, but they know it exists.
However, Cuban society reaches this point with something that was previously missing: a widespread awareness of its own strength, tested in the streets with bangs of pots and pans and shouts of Freedom! It is not about naive optimism, but about understanding that even on the longest nights there are cracks through which light sneaks in. And those cracks, opened by ordinary people, can mark the beginning of a change that no longer depends only on power.
