According to the EFE news agency, companies and embassies on the Island are “updating their evacuation plans and their lists of resident nationals”
14ymedio / EFE, Havana, January 29, 2026 – The British multinational Unilever, which produces personal hygiene and cleaning products in the Mariel Special Development Zone in partnership with the state-owned company Suchel, has evacuated its foreign workers from Cuba. This was reported by EFE, citing two sources close to the company who requested anonymity, as Unilever itself did not respond to questions from the Spanish news agency.
Not only companies but also embassies, EFE reported this Thursday, are reviewing their contingency and evacuation plans as a result of U.S. pressure on the Island following the operation carried out on January 3 in Venezuela that ended with the capture of Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores.
The Spanish agency contacted foreign diplomatic and business sources who confirmed that concern has escalated in recent weeks amid growing geopolitical uncertainty in the Caribbean and the possibility that the United States could even be preparing a military intervention.
“It is our responsibility to review plans and prepare scenarios,” a diplomat in Havana told EFE.
“It is our responsibility to review plans and prepare scenarios,” said a diplomat in Havana who asked that her name be withheld “due to the sensitivity of the issue.”
Nearly a dozen European and Latin American countries acknowledged to the Spanish agency that they are “updating their evacuation plans and their lists of nationals residing in Cuba, in some cases calling their citizens one by one to verify the information.”
Likewise, there are diplomatic missions preparing to endure long periods without electricity, fuel, and water, eventualities they believe could arise from the combination of the current context of total crisis on the Island and increasing U.S. pressure.
A minority of embassies—unnamed by EFE—said they do not see the need to update their evacuation plans for now, although they did not rule out doing so at some point and said they remain alert to the possibility that emergency procedures may need to be activated in the future.
As for the private sector, the agency reports that several subsidiaries of international companies privately acknowledge that geopolitical uncertainty has led them to reconsider their activities in Cuba with their parent companies.
The reasons cited include a potential U.S. military intervention, however limited it might be (as in Venezuela), and the impact on their operations of the country’s severe economic deterioration, especially the increase in power outages and the critical shortage of fuel.
If shipments of crude oil and derivatives from Venezuela and Mexico are definitively cut, maintaining production will be unsustainable
Some international firms—always under condition of anonymity—say they have fuel reserves for their manufacturing operations, but warn that if shipments of crude oil and derivatives from Venezuela and Mexico are definitively cut, it will be impossible to sustain production.
Since Maduro’s capture, the United States has issued several direct warnings to Cuba and has forced the cessation of Venezuelan oil supplies to Havana, the Island’s main source of fuel for more than 25 years. In the midst of that campaign, and without explanations from the government, Mexico also canceled a crude oil shipment to the Island that had been planned for January on a vessel that will now end up in Denmark.
This same week, U.S. President Donald Trump said that, following the energy shutdown, Cuba is “about to fall,” and just yesterday, during a Senate hearing, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he would “love” to see a change of “regime” on the Island, although he clarified that this did not mean Washington would provoke it.
Trump had previously gone further, stating that the only thing left to do in Cuba was to “go in and destroy the place,” to which Rubio added: “If I were in Havana, I would be worried, even if just a little.”
U.S. Under Secretary of State Christopher Landau himself said on Wednesday that Washington would like Cubans to be able to “exercise their fundamental freedoms” as early as 2026, a clear reference to political change on the Island.
According to an exclusive published last Thursday by The Wall Street Journal, what the U.S. administration is prioritizing is the search for a “traitor” within the Cuban regime who—much as it is doing with Delcy Rodríguez in Venezuela—could help facilitate a transition to democracy on the Island.
Translated by Regina Anavy
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