A question posted on Facebook by Drc. Esequiel Hernández Almeida sparked a social media frenzy and triggered a wave of responses that overwhelmingly hold the Cuban regime —and not the U.S. embargo— responsible for the lack of oil on the tables of the Island.
«Why is there no oil in Cuba? Oil is a plant-based product that can be obtained from crops such as sunflower, peanut, coconut, soybean, and many more. Cuba has thousands and thousands of caballerías of land lying fallow, filled with marabou and other plants... Is the lack of oil the fault of the blockade?», wrote the author of the viral post, summarizing in a few lines a contradiction that millions of Cubans experience daily.
The question arises at a critical moment: the price of a liter of oil has reached between 4,000 and 7,000 pesos in various provinces this month, following the removal of price caps mandated by Resolution 150/2026 from the Ministry of Finance and Prices.
The Minister of Food Industry, Alberto López Díaz, admitted in June that the regulated family basket had not distributed oil, chicken, or yogurt at all this year.
The comments on the post rejected the official argument with irony and frustration. Here are ten of the most representative ones:
"We don't even have salt when what there is most in Cuba is seawater."
"We need to create a law for oil. That way, we'll have an oil law even though we don't have oil, just like we have a fishing law but no fish."
"It is the fault of the 'corojo,' the 'girasol,' and the 'soja,' which do not want to grow in Cuban soil despite the 'effort' made by the 'Revolution,' planting caballerías and caballerías."
"The blockade is the perpetual excuse, the eternal alibi; it is the refuge of the incompetent, blaming others, and they still believe that the people are blind."
"The PCC's blockade of free enterprise, private property, and freedom of opinion. If the restrictions on private property are lifted, without parasitic bureaucracy, then I believe there will be production."
"Doctor, when they went to dismantle the sugar mills, they took us to a theater to convince us that it was better to import sugar than to produce it; perhaps oil met the same fate."
"Not having oil, water, electricity, food; in short, not having anything has one sole culprit, and it is not the blockade."
"That's like asking why there are no fish in Cuba if we are surrounded by seas, or why there are no eggs if the hens can eat corn, which can be perfectly grown in those lands you mention."
"There is no willingness to grow as a country, there is no decent salary to motivate people to work the land... Look at how we don't even have a jar of jam for snacks while the mango harvest rots in our fields."
"We can't even produce a mango juice. A deputy said this at the last extraordinary Assembly. Just imagine how we are going to produce even a liter of oil."
The agricultural backdrop underlying the question is striking. Marabú covers between 1.1 and 1.7 million hectares of previously productive land, and by 2025, the Ministry of Agriculture reported still having 401,767 idle hectares that were not being worked.
In June of this year, the government itself ordered to "end idle lands", implicitly acknowledging decades of agricultural failure.
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