A video published on Facebook by the user Elier Ramos shows a group of Cubans pouring oil directly into a tractor's engine to make it run, due to the inability to obtain diesel on the island. The images, which have gone viral this week, starkly illustrate the level of desperation faced by the Cuban countryside.
In the recording, the narrator encourages his teammates while one of them—whom they call "el Fena"—pours oil into the engine: "Come on, guys, there’s Fena pouring the oil. Pour it. Let's show that there are no needles. We're going for the third box." At the end of the clip, the phrase sums it all up: "We're going to burn fuel, we're going to burn fuel", referring to replacing the conventional diesel that simply does not exist.
The case is not isolated. Other Cubans have shared similar experiences: the farmer Juan José Martínez Serrat adapted his tractor to run on used cooking oil, and a family known as @el_paisus shared a comparable process. Previously, a Cuban made his car run on charcoal through gasification, a case that was even covered by Reuters.
From a technical standpoint, pure vegetable oil poses serious risks to modern diesel engines: higher viscosity, buildup of carbon deposits, and damage to injectors. However, older and more robust engines—which are precisely the ones that dominate the aging fleet of agricultural machinery in Cuba—tolerate this type of emergency adaptation better.
The root of the problem is the most severe fuel crisis Cuba has faced in decades. A liter of diesel on the black market is priced between 1,500 and 3,000 Cuban pesos, which is unaffordable for most producers. According to data from the first quarter of 2026, 96.4% of the 9,236 registered agricultural microenterprises on the island face severe restrictions due to a lack of fuel. Cuban farmers are exchanging food for diesel in order to continue their operations, according to the Food Monitor Program.
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) warned in March 2026 that the lack of diesel is preventing the harvesting of already planted crops in Cuba, which constitutes a humanitarian emergency.
The energy collapse has direct structural causes. Cuba went from receiving 105,000 barrels per day of Venezuelan oil in 2012 to less than 30,000 in 2025. The end of Venezuelan oil hits hard on the entire Cuban economy, and the situation worsened following the capture of Nicolás Maduro on January 3, 2026. Additionally, there is an executive order from President Donald Trump, signed on January 29, 2026, threatening tariffs on countries that supply oil to Cuba.
The desperation to find alternatives has also led to a surge in thefts of dielectric oil from electrical transformers to sell it as fuel, leaving entire municipalities without electricity for weeks in provinces like Las Tunas, Granma, Holguín, and Matanzas.
While the Cuban countryside is improvising with oil in tractors, Díaz-Canel has called for "the effort and talent of Cubans" and agroecological techniques as a response to the impossibility of using diesel machinery, a response that contrasts with the magnitude of the food crisis that the population is enduring.
Filed under: