Jon Lee Anderson

He died of cancer in 2013.

He was succeeded by his vice president, Nicolas Maduro, 2013.

And the oil continued, but coinciding with Maduro's arrival in power came the collapse of the world global oil prices, which had been hugely high and became very low, which caused the implosion of Venezuela's economy.

And so we also saw a huge exodus of people from Venezuela that had gone throughout the hemisphere, as much as a third of the population left.

But one way or another, Maduro managed to keep the oil coming to Cuba.

Now, it ebbed and flowed.

By the time Maduro was abducted by the Americans in January,

the amount of fuel that Venezuela regularly sent to Cuba had shrunk to about less than a third of what they had been sending before.

Once upon a time, I think it was 100,000 barrels a day, and now it was around 25,000, 27,000, 30,000.

So Cuba's oil needs are around 100,000 barrels a day.

It produces its own about 40,000 barrels.

As things stood at the beginning of this year,

It was getting a little bit from Venezuela and a bit more than that from Mexico.

And all of that ended with the Maduro capture.

In what he's said with regards to Cuba, he's been surprisingly circumspect in

For a Cuban-American, you would have expected perhaps a more heated response.

But he's measured his words quite carefully.

He's said things like, there has to be a change in Cuba.

It doesn't mean that we have to make the change.

In other words, what he's saying there is he would like to see a change.