Rubio says Cuba leaders must go as US dangles US$100 million

NEW PROTESTS

Cuba has seen a series of rare protests as economic misery grips the island of 9.6 million people.

On Wednesday, several dozen people, some banging pots and pans, protested against power outages in the San Miguel del Padron neighborhood on Havana’s outskirts, a resident told AFP.

Several other neighborhoods saw similar protests by evening, with residents in Playa shouting, “Turn on the lights!”, witnesses told AFP.

Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel acknowledged the “particularly tense” situation but pinned blame squarely on the United States.

“This dramatic worsening has a single cause: the genocidal energy blockade to which the United States subjects our country, threatening irrational tariffs against any nation that supplies us with fuel,” he wrote Wednesday on X.

Cuba lost the source for around half its fuel needs when US forces snatched Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro in a stunning raid in January, with his successor complying with US pressure not to aid Cuba.

Since then, only one oil tanker, from Russia, has reached Cuba.

The Trump administration already provided US$6 million in humanitarian aid to Cuba but channeled it through the charity of the Catholic Church, which has long played a go-between role for the two countries.

After Rubio’s initial comments on the US$100 million offer, Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez said it was a “lie” that “no one here knows anything about.”

“Will it be a donation, a deception or a dirty deal to curtail our independence? Wouldn’t it be easier to lift the fuel blockade?” Rodriguez wrote on X.

Rubio has been widely reported to be in contact with segments of the Cuban elite in hopes of stirring change.