An order in January, a blackout in August, 96,000 surgeries waiting
The Cuba oil sanctions signed on 29 January 2026 mean that supplying oil to the island costs a third country its access to the American market. Six months later the island's hospitals are postponing operations, the United Nations calls it energy starvation, and the reasoning was written down by a US State Department official in 1960.
This publication traces what world events do to what an ordinary person pays, eats or relies on. Most of the time the chain is incomplete and we say so. This one is not incomplete. It runs from a signature in Washington to an operating theatre in Havana, and every link in it is a document with a date on it.
What the order actually does
On 29 January 2026 the President of the United States signed Executive Order 14380, titled “Addressing Threats to the United States by the Government of Cuba.” It declares a national emergency. It was published in the Federal Register on 3 February 2026.
It did not ban the sale of oil to Cuba. According to the UN human rights experts who examined it, the order imposes an additional market-value-based duty on imports from any foreign country that directly or indirectly supplies oil to Cuba.
That distinction is worth holding onto, because the two instruments reach different people. A ban binds those the United States has jurisdiction over. A duty on a supplier's entire export trade to the United States changes the arithmetic for any government that sells more to America than it sells to Cuba. That is a description of how the instrument is built, not a measurement of what it did.
Unconfirmed Secondary reporting states that Mexico suspended its oil shipments to Cuba on 27 January 2026, two days before the order was signed. If it holds, it is the clearest available measure of how the instrument works, because the shipments would have stopped on the threat alone.
What the hospitals report
On 7 May 2026 three UN Special Rapporteurs issued a joint statement on the order. On 15 May, Edem Wosornu of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and Altaf Musani of the World Health Organization briefed journalists in New York after a three-day visit to the island.
| Figure | Value | Source and date |
|---|---|---|
| Pending surgeries | more than 96,000 | UN Special Rapporteurs, 7 May 2026, stated as reported |
| Patients waiting on delayed surgery | more than 100,000 | OCHA and WHO officials, 15 May 2026, after a country visit |
| Of those, children | 11,000 | Both statements |
| People with chronic illness at risk of interrupted treatment | about 5 million | OCHA and WHO, 15 May 2026 |
| Requiring radiation therapy | more than 16,000 | OCHA and WHO, 15 May 2026 |
| Undergoing chemotherapy | more than 12,000 | OCHA and WHO, 15 May 2026 |
| Pregnant women facing increased risk | more than 32,000 | OCHA and WHO, 15 May 2026 |
| Longest blackouts described | up to 20 hours | Both statements |
Measured, with a qualification. These are point-in-time figures published by named UN bodies on stated dates, not readings from a live feed. The two surgery figures are eight days and one body apart. The difference between them is not movement. The Rapporteurs described 96,000 as reported to them. The OCHA and WHO officials gave 100,000 in their own voice after visiting. The second is the firmer of the two.
Two details from the 15 May briefing are worth setting down exactly as they were given. Musani said the human cost is significant and continues to grow. Wosornu described staff carrying water up the stairs while women give birth, because the pumps do not work.
The count of blackouts is contradicted
Contradicted The UN release of 6 August 2026 refers to Cuba having recently experienced its third major nationwide blackout. Press reporting over the same period describes a sixth nationwide blackout in early August, following three in July.
These cannot both be a complete count of the same thing. A threshold question, what counts as major, and a drafting lag inside the UN release are both available explanations. No definitive series has been published. What is not in dispute is that the national grid has failed more than once this year and that hospitals were on generators when it did.
What the United Nations said today
On 6 August 2026, the same day the US Treasury added Cuba's military-industrial enterprises to its sanctions list, a group of UN human rights experts issued a statement on the wider policy.
They said the measures are an attempt to alter the constitutional order of a sovereign State through threats and coercion. They said the measures contravene Article 2 of the UN Charter. And they said, in terms, that the measures form part of a broader regime-change strategy encompassing the decades-long embargo on Cuba.
On food they were specific: food must never be used as an instrument of political pressure, and measures that knowingly deprive a population of the means to survive strike at the most basic guarantees of the rights to life.
The signatories are named in the release. They include the Special Rapporteur on the negative impact of unilateral coercive measures, the Special Rapporteur on the right to food, the Special Rapporteur on the right to development, the Independent Expert on a democratic and equitable international order, and the five members of the Working Group on Peasants.
Unconfirmed The same release urges action to prevent what it calls a silent Gaza on the island, and attributes that phrase to four members of the US Congress during a recent visit to Cuba. We report that the UN release contains the attribution, and nothing further.
The document from 1960
What the UN experts describe as a decades-long strategy has a paper trail, and it is held by the United States government itself, in the State Department's official documentary series.
On 6 April 1960, Lester Mallory, then Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, sent a memorandum to his superior. Its subject line was “The Decline and Fall of Castro.” It is a US federal work, in the public domain, and anyone can read it.
It opens by conceding the problem. The majority of Cubans support Castro, Mallory wrote, and the lowest estimate he had seen was 50 percent. There is no effective political opposition. Militant opposition from outside Cuba would only serve his cause.
Having ruled out force and politics, the memorandum turns to the remaining option:
“The only foreseeable means of alienating internal support is through disenchantment and disaffection based on economic dissatisfaction and hardship.”
“If such a policy is adopted, it should be the result of a positive decision which would call forth a line of action which, while as adroit and inconspicuous as possible, makes the greatest inroads in denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government.”
The memorandum then names the tool. The principal item in the economic quiver, it says, would be flexible authority in the sugar legislation, and it asks whether a formal proposal should be prepared for the Secretary.
Two qualifications, because this document is often quoted without them.
It is a recommendation from one official to another, not an adopted policy, and it ends by asking permission to draft a proposal.
What is established is the sequence. The memorandum named sugar as the principal economic lever in April 1960. The United States cut the Cuban sugar quota in July 1960, restricted trade in October 1960, and imposed the full embargo in February 1962. We state that order of events.
Why this one is different
Our Hormuz report traced twenty attacks on shipping to a world oil price and stopped there.
This chain does not stop. An order was signed on a date. Fuel supply to an island fell. A grid that was already weak failed repeatedly. Hospitals went onto generators, and generators need the fuel. Operations were postponed, and the number of people waiting for one is published by name and by date.
How many of them died waiting is not a published number. Nobody has counted, and until somebody does, the last link in this chain is a number that does not exist.
Sources and verification
Addresses below are printed in full so you can copy one and check us. We do not link out.
The 1960 memorandum. US Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1958 to 1960, Volume VI, Cuba, Document 499. Memorandum from the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs (Mallory) to the Assistant Secretary (Rubottom), 6 April 1960. US federal work, public domain. Read in full 6 August 2026. Confirmed https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1958-60v06/d499
UN statement of 6 August 2026. OHCHR, “Cuba: UN experts condemn new US sanctions as humanitarian crisis deepens.” Source of the regime-change characterisation, the Article 2 finding, the food statement, the 23 July energy designations, the 20 July State Department report, and the silent Gaza attribution. Read in full 6 August 2026. Confirmed https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2026/08/cuba-un-experts-condemn-new-us-sanctions-humanitarian-crisis-deepens
UN statement of 7 May 2026. OHCHR, “United States must end energy starvation of Cuba with severe human rights impacts: UN experts.” Source of the 96,000 figure, the description of Executive Order 14380 as a market-value-based duty, and the finding that the order does not demonstrate an unusual and extraordinary threat. Read in full 6 August 2026. Confirmed https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2026/05/united-states-must-end-energy-starvation-cuba-severe-human-rights-impacts-un
The OCHA and WHO briefing. UN News, “Blackouts and shortages disrupt healthcare across Cuba,” 15 May 2026. Source of the 100,000, five million, 16,000, 12,000 and 32,000 figures and of both quoted remarks. Read in full 6 August 2026. Confirmed https://news.un.org/en/story/2026/05/1167524
Executive Order 14380, the fuel order. Signed 29 January 2026, published in the Federal Register 3 February 2026. Its effect is described here only as the UN experts describe it. The address is given so a reader can check the text directly. Confirmed as to existence and date https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/02/03/2026-02250/addressing-threats-to-the-united-states-by-the-government-of-cuba
Executive Order 14404, the May sanctions authority. Signed 1 May 2026, published in the Federal Register 7 May 2026. The designations of 6 August 2026 are made under it. Its architecture is the subject of a separate report and is not described here. Confirmed as to existence and date https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/05/07/2026-09173/imposing-sanctions-on-those-responsible-for-repression-in-cuba-and-for-threats-to-united-states
The designations of 6 August 2026. US Treasury, Office of Foreign Assets Control, recent actions. Six individuals and five entities added under CUBA-EO14404, including the Union of Military Industries and two state technical import and export companies. No accompanying Treasury press release existed at the time of reading. US federal work, public domain. Read in full 6 August 2026. Confirmed https://ofac.treasury.gov/recent-actions/20260806
The humanitarian carve-out. OFAC Frequently Asked Question 1264, released 6 August 2026, stating a non-targeting posture for agricultural commodities including food, seeds and fertilizers, and for medicine and medical devices, and recording $100 million in US humanitarian assistance being operationalised. Read in full 6 August 2026. Confirmed https://ofac.treasury.gov/faqs/1264
The PAHO assessment. Pan American Health Organization, Public Health Situation Analysis, Cuba, revised 31 March 2026. Returned no extractable text through two routes. Nothing in this article is drawn from it. https://www.paho.org/sites/default/files/2026/04/phsa-cuba-revised-033126.pdf