Cuba’s Communist Party is holding on through the worst crisis in a generation because a sprawling internal surveillance apparatus, not its collapsing power grid or shrinking food supply, is doing the work of keeping the country in line, “The Wall Street Journal” reported Sunday.

The paper described a security network that reaches into Cubans’ homes, workplaces, and neighborhood sports centers, listens in on phone calls, and blankets everyday life from sports clubs to concert halls as U.S. sanctions squeeze the island.

The Journal framed the picture as an economy on the brink of collapse under a U.S. blockade, with civil unrest growing as living standards fall and no foreign patron riding to Havana’s rescue.

What has kept the government of President Miguel Díaz-Canelupright, the paper said, is the party’s iron control over daily life, not its ability to deliver electricity, food, or wages.

That description tracks with the state’s recent behavior on the ground.

At June’s nighttime pot-banging protests in Morón and other cities, civilian informants filmed demonstrators so police could identify and arrest them the next day, the Foundation for Human Rights in Cuba documented. The Ministry of the Interior’s black-beret riot brigade deployed in Santiago as officers cut internet access to isolate protest zones.

The economic picture behind the crackdown is stark.

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