Fresh blackout piles pressure on Cuba's struggling economy

Havana [Cuba], July 8: Cubans were gradually getting power back on Tuesday after the third nationwide power outage since the start of the year, causing mounting despair in the face of an energy collapse precipitated by a US fuel blockade.
The communist island was already struggling to keep the lights on before US President Donald Trump cut off its oil supplies in January, depleting the dwindling supply of fuel for its power plants.
Union Electrica (UNE), the state electricity company, announced a "total disconnection" to the entire island at midday Monday, leaving the communist country's 9.6 million inhabitants without power while not providing a reason.
It said early Tuesday that power was restored to over 30 percent of the capital, including 43 medical centers and nine water distribution installations.
The blackout marks the eighth on the island since late 2024. The lack of fuel "undoubtedly complicates the restoration process," Lazaro Guerra, director of electricity at the Ministry of Energy and Mines, said on state television late Monday without giving a timeline for repairs. Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel blamed US sanctions policy against the island. "While the US attempts to trigger social unrest through strangulation by blocking fuel access to Cuba, the UNE is mobilizing to reverse the collapse of the National Electric System," the president said.
"The work being done by electrical workers amidst a genocidal energy blockade is heroic," he added.
This latest blackout comes as the state imposes increasingly draconian power cuts across the country-over 30 hours at a stretch in parts of Havana and over 70 hours in some rural areas-in an increasingly desperate attempt to conserve fuel. "Living like this is agony," said Meyboll Font, a 51-year-old self-employed social media community manager.
Font said that her Havana neighborhood has been surviving on just "three or four hours of power a day" but that the blackout was worse because "you never know when it (electricity) will return."
"We have no WiFi, no electricity, we can't work," said a young software programmer working for a tourism start-up in another neighborhood.
Power outages have been a feature of life for years in Cuba, where the electricity generation system, composed mainly of dilapidated Soviet-era plants, is in shambles.
The blackouts and power cuts have accelerated since the fuel blockade began, with authorities citing a lack of fuel to run the generators that prop up the national grid.
Since January, Washington has only allowed one oil tanker, from Russia, to dock in Cuba, as part of a pressure campaign aimed at ending more than six decades of communist rule in Havana.
Trump points to the US overthrow of Venezuela's socialist president Nicolas Maduro and installation of a Washington-friendly successor as a potential blueprint for what he would like to achieve in Cuba. Cuba has repeatedly said its political model is not up for discussion and vowed to resist any invasion militarily.
The US blockade, coupled with a flurry of sanctions on the Cuban state and foreign companies that do business with it, have nudged a country already mired in a generational crisis closer to collapse.
Food, drinking water and medicine are in increasingly short supply, and some surgeries have been put on hold, prompting the United Nations to warn of a humanitarian emergency. Transport on the island has come to a near standstill.
Last month, the government unveiled a sweeping package of free-market reforms that, if implemented, would dramatically reduce state control over the economy.
The US State Department dismissed the plans as "superficial smoke signals" and said Trump was holding out for "much more substantial economic and political reforms that would make Cuba investable" and grant Cubans political freedom.
The two sides have held several rounds of talks but Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez last week said they had made "no progress" towards ending the impasse. On Monday, Havana accused Washington of preventing a debate at the United Nations on its oil blockade and sanctions.
Source: Qatar Tribune