(RNS) — In the face of an accelerating U.S. pressure campaign, deteriorating public utilities and economic inefficiency, Cuba’s communist government on Thursday (June 18) announced sweeping economic reforms, the largest privatization since before Fidel Castro’s revolution in 1959.
Since January, the Trump administration has made repeated threats of military action, and its sanctions and an oil blockade have been compounding Cuba’s existing fuel shortages, power outages and scarcity of food and medicines.
Amid the mounting internal and external pressure, faith communities have been speaking up and meeting with both the U.S. and Cuban governments.
U.S. Republican administrations have long seen faith groups as a cornerstone for humanitarian aid and community trust as they push for regime change in Cuba. In the last few months, the top U.S. diplomat in Cuba, Mike Hammer, has met with top Catholic bishops, a Catholic priest known for being critical of the Cuban government, a Methodist bishop and members of the Alliance of Evangelical Churches in Cuba, which includes several groups more often critical of the government, including the Assemblies of God.
Despair has become intense, said Rita María García Morris, the executive director of the Centro Cristiano de Reflexión y Diálogo (Christian Center for Reflection and Dialogue) based in the Cuban province of Matanzas, who with her team has helped meet the daily needs of vulnerable people and to advocate for peace, including several meetings with Hammer and U.S.-based pastors.
“Suicide, mental illnesses and hopelessness are extreme, extreme,” said García Morris in Spanish. “Our psychologists cannot keep up. We have a team of psychologists working even at night with phone calls, and they cannot keep up.”
A pile of trash burns in Havana, Cuba, Wednesday, June 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Jorge Luis Banos)
García Morris, a Presbyterian ruling elder, said that suffering due to days-long blackouts and spoiled food is widespread. In December, she had to travel to the Dominican Republic because she had developed dia …