Emergency measures hobble Cuba as fuel supplies dwindle

Havana (AFP) — Havana’s streets were eerily quiet Monday as emergency measures kicked in to conserve Cuba’s fast-dwindling fuel stocks under economic pressure from US President Donald Trump.

With oil supply in a US stranglehold, the communist government has shuttered universities, reduced school hours and the work week, and slashed public transport as it limited fuel sales.

The few Cubans who were out and about in the capital Monday said they were worried.

“One wonders how long a country can live under such conditions,” nurse Rosa Ramos, 37, told AFP, adding the fuel-saving measures were creating “a lot of uncertainty.”

With public transport cut back, Ramos had been waiting for over an hour for a taxi or bus to get to work.

Users of private taxis said fares had shot up overnight from about 200 pesos (40 US cents) to 350 pesos.

The island of 9.6 million inhabitants, under a US trade embargo since 1962, has for years been mired in a severe economic crisis marked by extended power cuts and shortages of fuel, medicine and food.

It has now also been cut off from critical oil supplies from Venezuela — whose leader Nicolas Maduro was toppled in a deadly US military strike last month — and from Mexico under the threat of US tariffs.

Trump has threatened to impose tariffs on any country that provides oil to the island nation he has said is “ready to fall.”