The Japan Times - Doctors, tourism, tobacco: Cuba buckling under US pressure

A blockade of oil deliveries to Cuba has forced emergency rationing, kneecapping the country's critical tourism and tobacco sectors even as remittances are under threat and income earned from sending doctors abroad has been all but cut off.

Here's where things stand:

- Medical services -

Sending medical missions abroad has long been a key source of foreign currency for Cuba, totaling around $7 billion last year, according to official figures.

In 2025, 24,000 health professionals were deployed in 56 countries, more than half of them (13,000) in Venezuela.

Foreign governments pay Havana directly for the doctors' services, but Washington has taken aim at the program it claims amounts to forced labor.

And countries wishing to stay in the good books of US President Donald Trump have started to yield.

Guatemala recently ended a 27-year agreement that had allowed thousands of Cuban doctors to work in remote areas of the Central American nation, and Antigua and Barbuda broke a similar deal in December.

Guyana, which has had agreements with Havana for decades, said it will in future pay doctors directly.

"Those agreements (with Cuba) are going to change over time," Guyanese Health Minister Frank Anthony told AFP.

- Tourism -

The US-imposed oil blockade since it ousted Venezuela's leader Nicolas Maduro in early January has badly hit Cuba's electricity grid, threatening to plunge the entire island into darkness.

The oil dearth also threatens to deal a fatal blow to tourism, the island's second source of foreign income after doctors.

The tourism sector, which employs more than 300,000 people, had already been weakened by US sanctions and the Covid-19 pandemic -- with revenues dropping by 70 percent in six years.

Earlier this month, Havana announced it was suspending jet fuel supplies over the energy crisis, prompting Canadian and Russian airlines and Latin American carrier LATAM to repatriate stranded passengers before suspending flights.

Countries including Canada, Russia, Spain and Germany have advised their citizens to avoid traveling to the island, long associated with picturesque beaches and cities, cocktails, live music and dancing.

- Remittances -

Despite a brief resumption, the last official channel for people abroad to send money home to family in Cuba all but disappeared in 2020 when Western Union suspended transfers.

Since then, Cubans have been receiving dollars mainly thanks to people who travel by plane from Miami, also bringing medicines and other essentials.

Early this month, Florida Republican Congressman Carlos Gimenez said he had asked American airlines serving Cuba to cancel all flights due to the "brutal" nature of the regime there.

This has not come to pass to date.

- Tobacco -

Cuba is known as a producer of high-quality tobacco and cigars.

In 2024, sales of Cuban cigars totaled $827 million.

"Agriculture is not spared by the current oil situation, which is very serious," Hector Luis Prieto, a producer from the western Vuelta Abajo region, told AFP.

With practically no fuel left, he is finding it ever harder to harvest and irrigate his crops, relying for power mainly on a solar panel provided by the state.

Cigar export figures for 2025 were due to be announced at an annual festival scheduled for late February but canceled due to the energy crisis.

Each year, the festival earns the government several million dollars thanks to a prestigious auction -- nearly $19 million in 2025.

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S.Yamada--JT