HAVANA \u2014 Jos\u00e9 Menenses, a taxi driver, slept in his 1952 Ford convertible along with hundreds of other drivers to save his spot in line to get an allotted 5 gallons of gas amid the country’s fuel shortage. <\/p>\n
“This is not the first time we’re in great difficulty, so we’ve always managed to have a Plan B,” he said, when asked what he would do if the shortages prevented him from driving people around. In Havana, people are also ferried around by bicycle or horse-drawn cabs.<\/p>\n
Menenses said he had to find a second job as a food vendor to make ends meet. He considers himself lucky because his children have small businesses that bring in some cash, and he has a small solar generator in his house and food in his refrigerator.<\/p>\n
\u201cI love what I do,” Menenses told NBC News. But these days there are few tourists and practically no gas, exacerbated by President Donald Trump’s oil blockade to the island in January. <\/a><\/p>\n Lines were also forming at a street market for basic food items like potatoes \u2014 for those who could afford it. “Today is market day but I can’t buy since I can’t afford it,” a young mother said. <\/p>\n At an upholstery business in Central Havana, Giovanni Rafael Peleta was happy there was power \u2014\u00a0unlike the recent total blackout that lasted a day.<\/a> “It’s like having a rope around my neck,” he said. <\/p>\n He said he welcomed help from any country, including the U.S. “Things are just too dire to keep throwing stones,” he said.<\/p>\n Nelson P\u00e9rez, a barber, said there’s an urgent need for change. “We’re tired,” he said as he was cutting a little boy’s hair. On social media, P\u00e9rez has posted messages of protest, calling for profound democratic and economic changes in Cuba.<\/p>\n Oscar P\u00e9rez-Oliva Fraga, Cuba\u2019s deputy prime minister, told NBC News in an exclusive interview <\/a>that the country was open to having a fluid commercial relationship with U.S. companies and \u201calso with Cubans residing in the United States and their descendants.\u201d Cuban President Miguel D\u00edaz-Canel urged “immediate” economic changes <\/a>earlier this month, as the Trump administration<\/a> has pressured for changes to the government’s leadership and economy. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HAVANA \u2014 Jos\u00e9 Menenses, a taxi driver, slept in his 1952 Ford convertible along with hundreds of other…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":535485,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[28,101],"class_list":["post-535484","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=535484"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535484\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/535485"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=535484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=535484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=535484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}