For several months, the United States has intensified its efforts to pressure Cuba’s government, implementing a “maximum pressure campaign” that includes blocking oil imports, imposing fresh sanctions, and pursuing criminal charges against a former Cuban official. The Trump administration has openly stated its objective of precipitating the collapse of Cuba’s Communist regime, aiming to spur political and economic reforms. In a recent speech to the United Nations General Assembly, President Trump asserted that Cuba’s government “will fall” amid the mounting crisis.

Despite widespread hardships marked by frequent power outages, critical fuel shortages, and steep price increases, daily life in Cuba persists. Photographer Lisette Poole González recently traveled across the island for two weeks, documenting the country’s ongoing realities amid this period of upheaval. Her journey took her from Havana in the west to Baracoa on the eastern tip of the island, including visits to remote provinces rarely accessible to foreign journalists due to government restrictions and fuel scarcity.

Poole González observed empty tourist beaches where visitors would typically flock, as well as fishermen unable to venture into the sea because of gasoline shortages. Public transportation in many areas has largely come to a standstill, while repeated failures of the national power grid have left entire regions in darkness for days. Most Cuban households receive only a few hours of electricity per day, and water shortages have become increasingly common.

Among these challenges, Poole González captured moments highlighting both resilience and routine life. Images include a man showering outdoors during a rainstorm, horse-drawn carriages providing transportation, and children being pushed on a long-unused carousel. She also documented Cubans engaging in everyday activities such as exercising, attending church services, and performing traditional Yoruba offerings along the Caribbean coast.

A significant focus of her work centered on Cuba’s youth, a generation born decades after Fidel Castro’s 1959 revolution, which established Cuba as a symbol of leftist resistance and initiated one of the world’s longest-standing state socialist systems. These young Cubans have grown up amid strict government controls and prolonged economic stagnation exacerbated by both U.S. sanctions and internal mismanagement. Through expanded access to the internet, many have developed aspirations to join the ongoing exodus of more than one million Cubans who have left the country in recent years.

Poole González’s trip also touched on personal connections to the island. Born in the United States to a mother who left Cuba in the 1970s, she visited family homes in Matanzas and the childhood residence of Castro in Holguín province, now a museum rarely visited by tourists. Nearly seven decades after the revolution, the future of Cuba’s political and economic system remains uncertain. Among Cubans, there is a widespread sense that change may be imminent, though the nature and impact of that change are yet to be determined.