Blackouts aren’t unusual in Cuba, but this one is different


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https://www.vox.com/politics/379206/cuba-power-grid-collapse-castro-venezuela-oil-blackout-russia

Blackouts aren’t unusual in Cuba, but this one is different

Cuba’s energy crisis is decades in the making.

 
 
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Cubans chat at night on a street during a nationwide blackout caused by a grid failure in Havana on October 18, 2024.

Alberto Roque/AFP via Getty Images

Ellen Ioanes covers breaking and general assignment news as the weekend reporter at Vox. She previously worked at Business Insider covering the military and global conflicts.

Cuba is suffering a nationwide blackout after the collapse of its electrical grid. Power went out all over the island Friday, just days before Tropical Storm Oscar hit the island as a category 1 hurricane on Sunday.

Though power has been partially restored in some areas, including much of Havana, millions of people — particularly in rural areas and in the eastern provinces, which bore the brunt of hurricane damage — are still without power on Tuesday.

The blackout is the culmination of decades of disinvestment, an economic crisis, and global factors affecting the country’s oil supply, and there doesn’t seem to be a long-term solution to the crisis.

The Cuban government regularly imposes hours-long blackouts in different parts of the country to conserve the fuel necessary to run the electrical plants. But the current outage is different. It was sparked by a breakdown at one of the country’s aging electrical stations and has affected every facet of life for ordinary people: They cannot cool or light their homes, food is spoiling in refrigerators, they cannot cook, and many can’t access water to drink or wash.

Though the situation has now reached a crisis point, it’s a tragedy that has developed over time and emphasizes Cuba’s fragile economy, development imperatives, and its tenuous place in world politics.

How did all of Cuba lose power?

The crisis started in earnest midday Friday, when the Antonio Guiteras power plant, one of the country’s largest, went offline. Seven of the country’s eight thermoelectric plants, which generate power for the island, were not working or under maintenance prior to the Guiteras plant’s failure. So when the Guiteras plant shut down, there were no more energy sources.

Since Friday’s failure, the grid has partly or totally collapsed three additional times.

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