Cuba's national power grid collapsed on Monday night. The nationwide outage left around 10 million people, including in the capital Havana, in the dark.
Cuba’s National Electric Company (UNE) announced on social media that a “total blackout” had occurred. This followed three nationwide outages in July.
The outage is rooted in the oil blockade imposed by US President Donald Trump following the overthrow of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on January 3. Venezuela had long been Cuba's main oil supplier. Imports from Mexico also halted under US pressure.
Cubans have long been accustomed to power cuts due to aging Soviet-era power plants. But the oil blockade has made it harder to supply fuel to these plants and to backup generators that typically run on imported diesel, increasing the frequency of outages.
The electric company says the fuel shortage has made the grid more vulnerable to failures and slowed the restoration of power.
72-year-old Cuban carpenter Julian Gonzalez said, “We’re living almost like fireflies, constantly in the dark. We don’t know when the power will come back—that’s our harsh reality.”
In recent weeks, outages in the capital have stretched up to 30 hours, while in other provinces they have lasted for days. Since the beginning of the year, the country has experienced five total blackouts.
The power crisis coincides with a cautious opening in Cuba’s tightly controlled energy sector, triggered by fuel shortages and heavy US sanctions. Havana recently approved the first foreign-backed fuel import project and allowed around 200 Cuban companies to participate in wholesale fuel distribution.
Cuba has been experiencing its worst economic crisis in decades for the past five years, a crisis deepened by the oil blockade imposed by the US president since the start of the year.
