Cuba faces challenges as it prepares for the post-Maduro era

After Venezuela, no country in the Americas was more affected by the events in Caracas than Cuba.

The two countries have shared a political vision of state-led socialism since 1999, when rookie Venezuelan presidential candidate Hugo Chavez met Fidel Castro, the aging leader of the Cuban revolution, on the tarmac of Havana’s airport.

Over the years, their mutual ties deepened as Venezuelan crude oil flowed into the communist-run island instead of Cuban doctors and medical staff traveling in the other direction.

After both men died, Chavez’s hand-picked successor was the Cuban-trained and educated Nicolas Maduro, chosen in part because he had the approval of the Castro brothers. He represented the continuity of the Cuban Revolution as much as the Venezuelan Revolution.

Now he, too, has disappeared from his seat of power in Caracas, having been forcibly ousted by America’s elite Delta Force team. In his absence, Cuba’s outlook is bleak.

The Cuban government has strongly condemned the attack as illegal and declared two days of national mourning for the 32 Cuban citizens killed in the U.S. military operation.

Their deaths revealed key facts long known about Cuban influence over the Venezuelan presidency and military. Maduro’s security department consisted almost entirely of Cuban bodyguards. Cuban nationals also hold various positions in Venezuela’s intelligence services and military.

Cuba has long denied it has active military or security personnel in Venezuela, but released political prisoners have often claimed they were interrogated by men with Cuban accents while in custody.

Moreover, despite endless public declarations of solidarity between the two countries, it is believed that in fact Cuban influence behind the Venezuelan state has created a rift between ministers most closely associated with Havana and those who feel that the relationship first established by Chávez and Castro has become fundamentally unbalanced.

Essentially, the powers that be believe that Venezuela gets little in return for its oil these days.

Venezuela is known to send about 35,000 barrels of oil per day to Cuba. None of the island’s other major energy partners, Russia and Mexico, come close.

The Trump administration’s tactic of seizing sanctioned Venezuelan oil tankers has already begun to worsen Cuba’s fuel and power crisis, and is likely to get very serious and quickly.

At best, the future of the beleaguered Caribbean island without Maduro in Caracas looking increasingly complex. Cuba was already experiencing its worst economic crisis since the Cold War.

Power outages persisted from end to end of the island for months. And the impact on ordinary Cubans has been extremely heavy. There has been no reliable electricity for weeks, food rotting in refrigerators, fans and air conditioners not working, mosquitoes swarming in the heat, and uncollected trash festering.

The island has seen widespread outbreaks of mosquito-borne diseases in recent weeks, with large numbers of people infected with dengue fever and chikungunya. Cuba’s health care system, once the crown jewel of the revolution, has struggled to cope.

It’s not a pretty picture. But it is an everyday reality for most Cubans.

The idea that Delcy Rodríguez could cut off Venezuelan oil supplies to Cuba fills Cubans with fear. That’s especially true if she seeks to appease the Trump administration and avoid the specter of more violence after the U.S. airstrikes against her predecessor.

President Trump claims that the United States is now in control of Venezuela.

Although these comments have been somewhat walked back by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, there is now no doubt that the Trump administration expects Rodriguez’s full compliance as acting president.

President Trump threatened further and potentially worse consequences if he “failed to act,” as he put it.

Such language, not to mention the U.S. campaign against Venezuela itself, has shocked and angered critics in Washington who say the White House is responsible for the worst forms of U.S. imperialism and interventionism seen in Latin America since the Cold War.

Critics argue that removing Maduro from power amounted to kidnapping and that the case against him should be dismissed at a final trial in New York.

Unsurprisingly, Trump appears unfazed by the claims and has warned that he could do it again against the Colombian president if necessary.

He called the worrying new situation in Latin America the “Donro Doctrine.” The Monroe Doctrine was a 19th-century colonial foreign policy principle that warned European powers not to interfere with America’s sphere of influence in the Western Hemisphere.

In other words, Latin America is America’s “backyard,” and Washington has an inalienable right to decide what happens there. Rubio used the term “backyard” to describe the region while justifying his actions against Venezuela on his Sunday talk show.

He also remains key to Cuba’s future. The U.S. economic embargo has lasted more than 60 years and has failed to remove the Castro brothers or their political project from power.

Rubio, a Cuban-American former Florida senator and son of Cuban exiles, wants nothing more than to be the man behind the man who ended 60 years of communist rule in his parents’ homeland.

He sees the strategy of removing Maduro and imposing strict terms on Rodríguez’s government in Caracas as key to achieving his self-proclaimed goals in Havana.

Cuba has gone through difficult times in the past, and the government still resists recent US military intervention in the region.

Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel said the 32 “brave Cuban fighters” killed in Venezuela “were fighting terrorists in the uniform of the Empire.”

President Trump retorted from Air Force One: “Cuba is ready to fall.”