Why the Cuba Embargo Produces Unrest but Not Surrender

When Havana residents took to the streets on July 8 banging pots and honking horns, they were demanding electricity. Not the end of the American fuel embargo. Not the removal of President Miguel Díaz-Canel. Just the lights. That distinction is the whole story of what Washington's pressure campaign has produced, and what it cannot. The US has spent months tightening fuel restrictions until Cuba's grid buckled. On July 6, a nationwide blackout left 10 million people without power ^[1]. Two days later, residents across Havana protested, banging pots and honking horns to demand electricity restoration ^[2]. This is the kind of unrest maximum-pressure coercion is built to generate: a population squeezed until it demands relief from its own government. The same pattern surfaced in May, when residents of Bahía, Marianao, and San Miguel del Padrón blocked streets and lit bonfires after the grid's fifth collapse, a demonstration met with militarization and at least 14 arrests ^[3]. In both rounds, the protesters demanded electricity and food. Neither round produced recorded anti-US or anti-embargo slogans. Who the protests blame is the prize, and both governments know it. At the United Nations on July 7, US Ambassador Waltz offered the General Assembly a different version of what ails Cuba. He insisted there is no American blockade at all ^[4].

Colleagues, that is the real Cuban embargo. It is not the one Havana pretends exists. It is the embargo the regime imposes on its own people. — Michael Waltz

Cuba's foreign minister Bruno Rodriguez answered with equal directness.

Those in the U.S. government who claim that the precarious state of Cuba's power system is the fault of our government are lying to hide the crime they are committing against the Cuban people. — Bruno Rodriguez

^[5] Both governments are fighting to control whether the pot-banging in Havana reads as a verdict on Cuban governance or on American fuel policy. Washington has the better material. The protests are about blackouts, not foreign policy, which is an outcome Washington can harvest as propaganda. It is not the outcome Washington needs. What the US actually demands is political. As of May Day, the recorded American position was economic liberalization and the removal of Díaz-Canel from power ^[6]. No amount of street rage at blackouts converts into that specific concession. The protesters want their refrigerator to run, not a change of president. Even Cuba's response to the pressure has not registered as the concession Washington requires. On June 18, Havana approved 176 free-market reforms, the most dramatic economic opening in 60 years. Díaz-Canel insisted the reforms did not mean his government was renouncing socialism. The State Department rejected the package as cosmetic, demanding substantial political change instead ^[7]. Díaz-Canel, announcing the reforms, was unusually candid about Havana's own failures.

There are obstacles that do not come from abroad or from the embargo. There is bureaucracy, delays, regulations that prevent people from producing and decisions that we have postponed — Miguel Díaz-Canel

That admission is the strongest evidence that the pressure is not wholly misdirected. It forced an opening and an acknowledgment that Havana's own bureaucracy is part of the problem. But the opening was economic, and Washington's demand is political. A government that liberalizes markets while refusing to give up socialism has not offered the surrender the embargo was designed to extract. Meanwhile, the pressure Washington generated is flowing outward against the coercer. China delivered 60,000 tons of rice and condemned the blockade through foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning ^[8]. UN expert George Katrougalos called the measures an echo of colonial-era practices ^[9]. Mexico has sent six aid shipments since February, joined by Belize and Colombia, cushioning the squeeze and routing humanitarian energy into solidarity with Havana rather than pressure on it ^[10]. The UNGA urgent debate on the embargo passed 136 to 9 ^[4]. Washington is winning the narrative inside Cuba and losing it everywhere else. The embargo generates pressure in every direction except the one that produces the concession. Cubans bang pots at the government that cannot keep the grid running, which Washington collects as an indictment of Havana but cannot convert into a demand for Díaz-Canel's removal. The world condemns the government doing the coercing, which strengthens Havana's diplomatic position. And Cuba's biggest economic opening in six decades is waved off because the price Washington set was never economic to begin with. Coercion can make a population furious at the government that fails them. It can make the world furious at the government that squeezes them. What it cannot do is make either form of anger arrive at the specific political surrender the coercer set out to extract. The next grid collapse is a matter of when, not if. When it comes, the pots will bang again in Havana, and Washington will say the regime should turn the lights back on, and Havana will say the blockade stole the fuel. Both will be right about the other. Neither will get what it wants.