In a solemn-looking meeting room in Havana, the CIA director sat at the same table as the Cuban Interior Minister and the head of Cuban intelligence. An unthinkable image, almost heretical, for so many decades, became a reality this Thursday. The meeting, photos of which were released by the U.S. intelligence agency itself, is so far the biggest milestone in the two months of opaque negotiations underway between Washington and Havana. The symbolic event, where both sides announced their commitment to “seriously address economic and security issues,” comes at a moment of maximum weakness for the Castro regime, suffocated like never before by the energy embargo imposed since the end of January by Donald Trump.
The day before the Boeing C-40B Clipper landed in Havana with an official delegation headed by CIA director John Ratcliffe, Cuban authorities had announced a new and catastrophic fuel shortage. “We have absolutely no fuel. We have no more reserves,” said Energy and Mines Minister Vicente de la O Levy on Cuban television. On the day of the announcement, the island suffered blackouts — a constant problem in recent months —that in some parts of the island lasted up to 22 hours. The fuel supply crisis is also triggering serious problems in basic services such as hospitals and transportation. Cubans, increasingly at their breaking point, are staging protests with pot-banging demonstrations, by setting fire to the piles of garbage on the streets, and by throwing stones at gas stations that are out of service. Amid the collapse, the Castro regime’s repressive apparatus is one of the few things that remains standing.
Since Trump targeted Cuba, right after the surgical strike on Caracas to take Venezuela President Nicolás Maduro by helicopter to a New York jail, there have been a series of often contradictory signals about the island’s future. While imposing a severe energy embargo, the U.S. president also sent signals of openness toward a possible diplomatic path. In March the U.S. allowed through a Russian tanker with 100,000 tons of crude oil, which only temporarily alleviated another critical shortage, yet at the same time Trump issued statements about “taking Cuba.” Each new blow and threat has been followed by a truce of sorts, following the Republican leader’s classic playbook of aggressive negotiation.
This week, both Secretary of State Marco Rubio and President Trump issued conciliatory messages. Shortly before that, they had further tightened sanctions, imposing penalties on any non-U.S. person or entity that maintains commercial relations with the island, especially in the energy, defense, security, and finance sectors. As a prelude to the CIA meeting, the State Department released a statement offering the island $100 million in aid, which the Castro regime accepted this Thursday, in exchange for “significant reforms to Cuba’s communist system.” Against this backdrop of gifts and penalties, the U.S. media also reported this Thursday that the United States plans to prosecute former Cuban President Raúl Castro, who has not completely relinquished power, on charges related to the 1996 downing of a plane belonging to a Cuban exile humanitarian organization in Miami.
The messages from the Castro regime have also been ambivalent. They range from a collaborative attitude and willingness to sit down at the table, to the usual mantras of the “any external aggressor will encounter an impregnable resistance” type. Reactions to Thursday’s meeting have been lukewarm. The Communist Party of Cuba framed it as “part of the efforts to confront the current situation.” Meanwhile, the Ministry of the Interior, which heads the vast espionage and repression apparatus, spoke of a “developing bilateral cooperation,” in addition to emphasizing its “unequivocal condemnation of terrorism in all its forms and manifestations.” The specter inherited from the Cold War, which positions Cuba as a safehaven for adversaries of the United States, according to the CIA’s own statement after the meeting. This is one of the arguments that the White House, at least publicly, insists on, as it engages in a political and military campaign to regain its influence over the region, a campaign that is tearing apart the seams of the international order.
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