Cuba marks Fidel Castro's 100th birthday amid deepening economic crisis and US oil embargo

Centenary amid crisis

Cuba marked the 100th anniversary of Fidel Castro's birth on Thursday, August 13, with a week of commemorations including ballet performances, poetry readings, art exhibitions, concerts, and an international book fair. More than 1,500 activists and representatives of solidarity organizations from over 60 countries across Latin America, Europe, Africa, and Asia traveled to the island for the events, according to the Cuban government. The Wall Street Journal reported that more than 300 academic papers were presented during the celebrations. Posters bearing Castro's image hang in hospitals, and billboards displaying his slogans, including "Homeland or Death," line the streets of Havana.

Economic collapse and US pressure

The crisis deepened after the Trump administration imposed an oil embargo in January 2026, followed by additional sanctions aimed at pressuring the communist government. Bloomberg reported that the island has received almost no fuel in 2026 under the US-imposed blockade. Power outages exceed 20 hours a day in most provinces, crippling food production, transportation, and tourism. The national electricity grid suffered three nationwide failures in July alone.

For ordinary Cubans, the impact includes shortages of fuel and medicine, declining industrial and tourist output, flight cancellations, and reduced working and school hours. ABC reported that while celebrants gathered at La Piragua, a plaza facing the US embassy in Havana, nearby residents had been without electricity for more than 30 hours, with buildings collapsing under garbage, spoiling food, and lack of water.

Díaz-Canel acknowledges the storm

President Miguel Díaz-Canel, speaking at the opening of the First International Colloquium "Fidel: Legacy and Future" on Monday, acknowledged the severity of the crisis facing the island. He described the moment as one of the most difficult the Revolution has lived through. The colloquium was part of a broader program of conferences, panels, book presentations, exhibitions, and concerts organized across numerous state institutions.

The storm is real, our people live it every day: in the power outages that interrupt family life, the workday, the learning of our children and young people; in the inflation that erodes the purchasing power of wages; in the shortage of fuel that paralyzes the economy and transportation; in the difficulties of completing the basic food basket; in the emigration that tears our young people away.

Díaz-Canel also said Castro's legacy speaks to Cubans "with greater force than ever" and urged remembering him "as a guide for overcoming the challenges before us today, in the real Cuba of 2026."

Reforms and contradictions

In June, the Cuban government approved a package of 176 measures aimed at opening the island's socialist economy to private and foreign investment. Reuters noted that if fully implemented, the measures would represent an embrace of free-market capitalism contrasting sharply with the socialist model that defined Castro's rule. US fuel exports to Cuba's private businesses have surged this year, feeding a chaotic black market and deepening social and economic inequality. The celebrations coincide with ongoing negotiations between Havana and Washington, a paradox ABC noted given that the struggle against what Washington represented was the pillar on which the Revolution was built.

Castro's enduring shadow

Castro governed Cuba for nearly five decades, from 1959 until he transferred executive power to his brother in 2008, retaining significant authority until his death in 2016. For some residents, the crisis has provoked nostalgia. Benito Cisneros, 62, told Reuters that at a moment of crisis like this, Castro "might have had other solutions that today we simply do not have."

Fidel left us everything, everything good that came from Cuba's revolutionary process. In these difficult times we're living through, he would have found a way to bring some happiness to his country and his people.

Bloomberg reported that Washington has been warning that Cuba will be next, after US Special Forces captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in January and launched an attack on Iran the following month.