How Cubans Are Surviving

Why hasn’t Cuba’s government collapsed yet? It’s been six months since President Trump cut off the island’s fuel sources, in an effort to force political change. “It’s just going to fall,” he told reporters on Jan. 4. And yet, it hasn’t.

The New York Times recently sent a team of journalists to Cuba to try to figure out why. (It’s highly unusual for the Cuban government to grant Times journalists visas to report from the island. The last time was almost eight years ago.)

What they found was a remarkable story of people adapting to extreme circumstances — with lithium batteries, jury-rigged generators, solar panels and more. My colleague Sam Sifton, who hosts our sister newsletter, The Morning, spoke with our reporter Jack Nicas about his recent trip, and what it took to report from Cuba.

How they’re resolviendo in Cuba

Sam: I want to ask you about one farmer you met who devised a tiny backyard refinery to make gasoline out of shredded plastic. “Cubans thrive amid crisis,” he told you. Did you see a lot of that kind of ingenuity in Cuba?

Jack: One of the most important words in the Cuban lexicon is “resolver.” It literally means “to solve,” but in Cuba, after decades of a U.S. trade embargo, it really means “to figure things out by any means necessary.”

It explains how Cubans put Soviet engines into 1950s American cars to keep them running or ate breaded grapefruit rinds to imitate meat during their economic crisis following the fall of the Soviet Union.

And now they’re resolviendo again. We saw a lot of creativity during our trip across Cuba. People drilled solar panels to the tops of electric rickshaws. They are using lithium batteries to power concerts. There are even stories of people powering their cars with charcoal and cooking oil.

As a result, the country is still functioning, despite the hardship.

Sam: What was your reception in the country like? It’s been a long time since the Cuban government has allowed Times journalists to report there.

Jack: Everywhere we turned there were stories, and the Cuban people were eager to tell them. We spoke to dozens of people in Havana and beyond who wanted to express their frustration and exhaustion with the status quo. It was a mixed bag on whom they blamed. Some saw the Cuban government at fault for failed economic policies and political repression, while others believed Trump was making them suffer for his own personal gain. Many blamed both.

Sam: How hard was it to get your visa? Did government minders follow you around?

Jack: It took a lot of convincing to get. I met with top Cuban diplomats in Mexico City, Havana, Washington and New York over six months, and sent many letters to persuade them that we would tell this story fairly. Once we got to Havana to report, we met with Cuban officials a few times, but they otherwise didn’t bother us. We traveled around freely, decided our story targets and chose whom we interviewed.

Read the team’s first dispatch from Cuba here.

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RECIPE

Soft bread is filled with a mayo-rich and Dijon-spiked egg mixture in this furikake egg salad sandwich. The filling gets an herby lift from chopped dill and the furikake’s sea-like flavor.