As U.S. Blockade Squeezes Cuba, Christians Push Solidarity Over Sanctions
As Cuba continues to face severe blackouts, economic crisis, and political pressure, Christians on the island and their allies in the U.S. are working to save lives and advocate for Cuban freedom.
In recent months, the nation of Cuba has been experiencing blackouts so severe that journalists at the New York Times have mapped the effects in satellite photos taken from space. The island’s economy, which had been in crisis for several years, has all but come to a standstill since January’s U.S.-led capture of Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro, a key ally of the island’s government. Later that month, the Trump administration also renewed and hardened a longstanding comprehensive embargo on the island, citing “actions of the Government of Cuba directly threaten the safety, national security, and foreign policy of the United States.”
More so than ever, U.S. pressure on the island has made daily life difficult. Jorge González Núñez, president of the Movimiento Estudiantil Cristiano de Cuba, spoke to Sojourners in voice messages over the course of three days, originally in Spanish.
“We’ve had only two hours of electricity each day for a week, or more,” González Núñez said.
Movimiento Estudiantil is the local branch of the Student Christian Movement, a progressive, youth-led community of faith and social action. Living in a central district of Havana, González Núñez and other workers and volunteers with the Movimiento Estudiantil have been focused on community organizing and medicine distribution efforts across the island. González Núñez emphasized the “material solidarity” the Movimiento Estudiantil Cristiano has received from affiliated student groups in the U.S. and Canada.
“Havana in some ways seems like it has certain privileges for being the capital, but even that has nuances,” González Núñez said. “You can go two or three days without electricity, depending on where you live.”
In 2023, the International Energy Agency reported that more than 95% of Cuba’s electricity generation came from burning oil or natural gas. In the first days of his second term, U.S. President Donald Trump issued Executive Order 14380, designed to intensify the long-standing U.S. embargo on Cuba by imposing additional tariff penalties on “any other country that directly or indirectly sells or otherwise provides any oil to Cuba.”
The U.S.-directed pressure campaign has forced some reassessment in Havana. On Thursday, June 18, Cuban Prime Minister Manuel Marrero announced sweeping economic reforms meant to address the crisis. For the moment, little has changed for ordinary Cubans.
Borrowing from Cuban sociologist Mayra Espina, González Núñez described the current situation on the island as a “polycrisis,” saying that, “Precisely because the conditions in the country have deteriorated so much, we are going through many crises within one crisis.”
He emphasized that the Cuban people have historically had “a great capacity to resist internal problems, internal inefficiencies.” Recent years, however, have been more difficult.
“When we face the current crises, our social energy is already worn down,” he said.
U.S. faith group solidarity
Across the U.S., many church groups are working to raise awareness among American Christians about the realities of daily life in Cuba.
Betsy Merritt, a member of the Presbyterian Church USA’s Cuba Partners Network advocacy committee, last visited Cuba with a group in March 2026.
“There are massive mountains of trash in the street, including, you know, right across the street from some of the churches,” Merritt said. “You have beggars on the street coming up to us, tourists, and asking for money. Until last year, I don’t think we had ever experienced that. So clearly people are desperate, and the situation in the streets is just very dire.”
The PCUSA isn’t the only American Christian denomination with ties to Cuba. The Presbyterian Church in Cuba also counts the United Church of Christ denomination among its global partners. Rev. Karen Georgia A. Thompson, general minister and president and CEO of the UCC, told Sojourners the denomination has a long history of sending delegations to the island. Thompson, who in March 2026 reiterated the UCC’s call for an end to U.S sanctions on Cuba, said the UCC regularly puts out action alerts to raise awareness domestically about the effects of U.S. foreign policy.
Other Christian groups are also working to sound the alarm about Cuba’s ongoing crisis. Bryan Epps, chief program and impact officer at SojoAction, the advocacy wing of Sojourners, said the group has met with Cuban diplomatic leadership. SojoAction later held a public live interview on social media with Tanieris Diéguez, the deputy chief of mission at the Cuban embassy in the United States. [Editor’s note: Under Sojourners’ protocol for reporting on itself, no Sojourners staff outside of the editorial teams reviewed this story before it was published. Read more about our editorial independence policies.]
Epps highlighted how a solid understanding of history is necessary to faithfully advocate for the Cuban people. To that end, SojoAction hosted a multi-part webinar series aiming to educate American Christians on the relationship between both countries, stretching back to American imperialism and Cold War politics. Epps told Sojourners that Bible stories like that of the Good Samaritan should motivate people of faith to international, cross-cultural solidarity.
“The U.S. church can do what diplomacy has apparently been unable to do, extend a hand, bear witness, and refuse to let political hostility set the terms of how we treat our neighbors.” Epps wrote in an email.
Action in Congress
As the energy crisis has worsened, some political leaders in the U.S. have spoken out. In late May, Rep. Nydia Velázquez (D-N.Y.) introduced a War Powers Resolution alongside Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.) to “terminate unauthorized U.S. military action against Cuba.” Velázquez told Sojourners she hopes the resolution is a strong message to the president that, “The Constitution gives Congress, not the president, the power to declare war.”
Velázquez, first elected to Congress in 1992, is vocal about her Catholic faith.
“Faith teaches us that every human life has dignity. So what is happening to the Cuban people? Families without electricity, hospitals without power, parents who cannot feed their children, is an assault on that dignity,” Velázquez said. “So this is not about defending the Cuban government, it’s about defending the rule of law, the Constitution, and the lives of innocent people.”
Velázquez, who is Puerto Rican, told Sojourners seeing the effects of prolonged blackouts in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria hit the island in 2017 helped inspire her to speak up for the people of Cuba now.
“More people died after [Hurricane] Maria left the island than when Maria struck the island because we didn’t have electricity,” Velázquez said. “Many people died not from the storm itself, but from the darkness that followed. So this is not an inconvenience. It can be a death sentence for the most vulnerable.”
Some of the most vulnerable people in Cuba today are the elderly and those with disabilities, Fr. Manuel Puga told Sojourners in Spanish. Puga is a Catholic priest living in Jacksonville, Fla. He left Cuba in 2011, and visits the island at least yearly. He spoke with Sojourners shortly after returning from a trip to the island, bringing medicine and supplies to assisted living facilities across Cuba run by the church.
“Most of the projects of the church were confiscated by the government in 1961, but a few of them stayed around,” Puga said. “These [projects] are where the sisters, they care for old people. And these people, the elderly, they cannot fight for their lives … the cities in Cuba have become jungles of survival, and they cannot survive it.”
Puga, who was born in 1966 shortly after the beginning of communist rule, told Sojourners the ongoing crisis is “the worst moment in Cuba’s history.” He places the blame squarely on government mismanagement, saying that Cuba’s leaders have failed to use the support they received from foreign governments—the Soviet Union in prior decades and Venezuela in recent years—to improve infrastructure and standards of living.
“We need to pray for Cuba, right? For the real freedom of Cuba,” Puga told Sojourners. “The solution cannot be like giving a Band-Aid to someone with a serious wound, leaving the same causes there, trying to find the solution while maintaining the very same causes of the problem.”
Until U.S. forces deposed Venezuelan President Maduro, the country was one of Cuba’s largest backers.
“The famous blockade is very relative,” Puga said, pointing to decades of heavily subsidized oil Venezuela sent to Havana in exchange for military training and equipment.
After Maduro’s capture, Trump posted to social media that “THERE WILL BE NO MORE OIL OR MONEY GOING TO CUBA – ZERO!”
International neighbors
Mitchell Fulton, another member of the PCUSA’s Cuba Partners Network, told Sojourners the group has been fundraising to send key supplies—solar energy, medicine, and shelf-stable food—to the island. He said legal challenges have slowed deliveries. It’s been difficult to find a shipping company that will send items to Cuba, citing fear of repercussions from the Trump administration.
In addition, Fulton and Merritt said they were both participants in an ecumenical gathering of faith leaders lobbying representatives on Capitol Hill.
González Núñez and Movimiento Estudiantil have been helping distribute medical supplies donated mainly by American and Canadian groups.
“We know that in the end it’s a small drop in the ocean of needs, but we believe that it’s an important drop,” González Núñez said. “It’s coming to us with lots of love, from people who help, who stand in solidarity with the Cuban reality.”
Claudia Morales Moreno, training secretary for Movimiento Estudiantil and one of González Núñez’s colleagues, lives in Sancti Spiritus in central Cuba, where blackouts have been scheduled to last between 30 and 37 hours, but last up to 50 hours according to reports. Like González Núñez, she spoke to Sojourners in Spanish, sending voice messages over several days.
Morales Moreno said a lack of both cooking gas and refrigeration is making it hard for families to eat. Without electricity, Morales Moreno said ATMs across Cuba are no longer operating. She said that most in her province, and across the country, rely on cash.
“Because for us digital payments have never been as reliable as money in cash,” she said. “So, now families are also limited by not being able to access this money.”
The Movimiento Estudiantil de Cuba has had to cancel some meetings, but local leaders are still working where they can. Local groups have become more active, “working in the communities where they are,” Morales Moreno said.
From Havana, González Núñez said that, contrary to the Trump administration’s efforts, Americans should not consider Cuba a threat.
“Find a way to approach people from beyond what communications say, from beyond what they say on television, beyond social media,” he said. “There’s no story more sincere than the one you hear in first person, and no media has the capacity to tell reality as it is, with eyes so close to it.”
Puga told Sojourners it’s important to remember the United States and Cuba are neighbors.
“Miami is closer to Havana than to Jacksonville, the city I live in,” Puga said. “This country freely professes its faith, its solidarity with any cause of freedom and justice in the world, and I think that gives the American people a responsibility for the freedom of Cuba, from the solidarity the American people show.”
As Morales Moreno deals with long blackouts, she hopes Christians in the U.S. will remember that the ongoing blockade “isn’t a faraway policy.”
“It’s a reality that translates to hospitals without medicine, families without food, students without the resources to learn,” Morales Moreno said. “People need to understand that solidarity is more human than any sanctions.”
Ethan Meyers provided translations from Spanish for this story.
“[Support is] coming to us with lots of love, from people who help, who stand in solidarity with the Cuban reality.”—Jorge González Núñez, president of the Movimiento Estudiantil Cristiano de Cuba