SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
The lights go out for hours at a time. Food, fuel and medicine are increasingly hard to come by, and the long, bitter cycle of confrontation between Havana and Washington, D.C. grinds on. Cuba is once again living through a moment of reckoning. The Cuban authorities do not routinely grant visas to foreign journalists, but NPR's Eyder Peralta has been able to return to the island a year after his last visit. He joins us from Havana now. Eyder, thanks so much for being with us.
EYDER PERALTA, BYLINE: Thank you for having me, Scott.
SIMON: How has the city changed since you were last there?
PERALTA: It's so much darker. I mean, it feels like a hurricane just hit and blew away all the electricity poles. Yesterday, I went on a walk around Old Havana and I found these two guys sitting in front of the hotel that Ernest Hemingway used to stay at. I couldn't even see them. It was so dark. And they told me that after the sun sets, all they do is stare at the dark and wait to get sleepy. We're not using their names because they fear speaking would get them in trouble with the government.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Non-English language spoken).
PERALTA: And what they're saying is, "in the Cuba of the past, this place would be completely full - couples and drinks and parties." And I asked him, you know, do you think this is going to change anytime soon? And he stayed quiet for a while.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Non-English language spoken).
PERALTA: And he said, "I'll tell you what my dad taught me. Until you start to actually see things, you should keep your mouth shut."
SIMON: Eyder, do the people you spoke with there seem to want economic relief, political change, both?
PERALTA: They just want change. You know, it's been more than 10 months since the U.S. oil blockade plunged them into darkness. And, you know, many years before that, the country had already been deteriorating. By some estimates, in the past decade, about a quarter of Cubans have left the country. A lot of Cubans I talk to feel betrayed by politics, and what they want is the basics - food, electricity, water. Here, things are so bad, a month's salary barely buys you a bottle of cooking oil. In some ways, this is the upside-down world, and Cubans don't really care how they get it. They just want their world to be normal again.
SIMON: And how much of this crisis is due to that U.S. blockade of the island and other sanctions, and how much is the result of mismanagement by Cuba's own leadership?
PERALTA: Both of those things are to blame. The blackouts in Cuba - they predate this oil blockade, but the ratcheting up of U.S. sanctions has made things way worse. I'll give you one example. The COVID pandemic hit Cuba very hard, but its hospitals were able to keep performing dozens of kidney transplants. This year, hospital officials say they haven't performed a single transplant because they don't have the medical supplies or medicine they need to perform them.
SIMON: And does the Cuban government feel their survival is at stake?
PERALTA: Yeah. I mean, they view this moment as a very serious threat. President Trump has continually said a military intervention is on the table, and something like that might be harder now that Republicans have lost the House and Senate. But this is more complicated than that. The big irony here is that as the U.S. has tightened its sanctions and put up an oil blockade, U.S. exports to Cuba are at a historic high. Right now, nearly all of the gasoline getting into Cuba is coming from the United States. So you can imagine the kind of leverage it has over the Cuban economy. Yesterday, I sat down with Cuba's deputy foreign minister Josefina Vidal, and she said that's exactly what these sanctions are designed to do.
JOSEFINA VIDAL: (Through interpreter) That's the contradiction. The U.S. is unwilling to recognize Cuba's right to be sovereign and independent. The policies are designed to make Cuba dependent on the U.S., and, of course, we're going to fight so that doesn't happen.
PERALTA: What you're hearing there, Scott, is defiance. She's saying we're not going to change our political system no matter what you do to us, and it tells you that these two countries continue to talk past each other, and there is not much hope for immediate relief for the Cuban people.
SIMON: NPR's Eyder Peralta in Havana. Thanks so much.
PERALTA: Thank you, Scott. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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