To promote a nonviolent transition to a Cuba that respects human rights, political and economic freedoms, and the rule of law.
Fuel shortage exposes two tiered system in Cuba. No turning back because Cubans have seen the true face of the regime says Cuban Priest.
May Day Parade in Revolution Plaza in Havana cancelled this year.
There is a critical fuel shortage in Cuba that appears to be evidence of socialist economic inefficiencies, and a failure to invest in infrastructure according to reporting by the Associated Press.
Cuba's fuel shortage worsened, with officials canceling events such as the May Day Parade in Revolution Plaza in Havana, restricting gasoline sales, and transferring some university sessions online. Cubans have faced shortages of several products during the recent economic crisis, but the cancellation of activities due to fuel shortages had not been recorded before . The cancellations come after several days of heavy queues at gas stations. According to experts, the shortage of gasoline and diesel is not due to a lack of crude oil – Cuba produces approximately half of what it requires and imports the remainder from other countries – but to difficulties in refining it.
“There is no lack of crude oil in Cuba,” said Jorge Piñón, senior research fellow at the University of Texas at Austin’s Energy Institute.
He claims Venezuela is selling Cuba the same amount of crude as last year, if not slightly more.
Cuba has also acquired oil from Russia. Nora Gámez Torres in her October 17, 2022 article "Cuba ramps up imports of Russian oil, helping Putin to evade sanctions" reported that "amid economic and political turmoil, Cuba has received at least $322 million worth of oil from Russia since the start of the war in Ukraine." The 4 million barrels of Urals crude oil received by Cuba “is the largest quantity since the collapse of the Soviet Union,” said Jorge Piñón, a senior research fellow at the University of Texas at Austin’s Energy Center who closely tracks oil shipments to the island. (United Nations data on world trade documents that Cuba received $35 million in Russian petroleum in 2017 and $55.5 million in 2018.)
According to Piñón, Cuba also got two tankers from the Mexican national oil company Pemex in April, each containing 300,000 barrels of crude oil. He blamed the shortages on technical production issues in the 1957-built refineries. Cuban officials have not revealed a particular cause for the shortages, but have previously highlighted difficulty with "inputs," which Piñón believes could refer to an additive Cuba obtains from Iran and uses to refine Venezuela's heavy oil. This past weekend, fuel shortages became acute.
Officials are calling on Cubans to walk to May Day events to conserve fuel, but have brought in political pilgrims from around the world to ferry around in vehicles. “More than 300 foreign visitors from 29 countries make up the so-called XVI May Day International Volunteer Work Brigade that the Cuban regime receives and attends in Havana a week after the official parade on that date.”
Despite this, after parading on May Day in Havana, between May 3rd thru the 6th, the "brigadistas" will travel to Sancti Spíritus, and there "they will be taken on tours to places of economic, social and cultural interest, such as neighborhoods in transformation and agricultural cooperatives, among others," the note specified. Most of the guests of the XVI May Day International Volunteer Work Brigade are from the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Ghana and Chile.
These privileged foreigners will get VIP treatment denied to every day Cubans.
Cubans are tired of being treated as second class citizens in their own country, and in July 2021 heard over official media heard the regime elite call for war on dissenters, then followed through with deadly violence to silence Cubans petitioning their government for more freedom..
Father Alberto Reyes
Father Alberto Reyes of the Archdiocese of Camagüey in a report by ACI Prensa said that “there is no turning back now,” because Cubans have seen the true face of the members of the regime, “who for years spoke to us day by day like a drumbeat about how much they loved us and wanted our good.”
“Now we know that it was all a lie, and that neither hand nor voice wavers when it comes to proclaiming destruction and death, and inciting the war of brother against brother in a fight whose wounds perhaps may never heal,” concluded Father Reyes.
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