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Norlys Perez

Cuba’s electrical system collapsed  Friday, as mounting problems with a lack of oil and dilapidated infrastructure reached a crisis point, paralyzing the economy of the Communist nation.

The Energy and Mining ministry announced the <a href="https://x.com/EnergiaMinasCub/status/1847315612738978114">“total disconnection” of the national electricity system</a> at 11:07 a.m., after the Antonio Guiteras thermoelectric power plant in the city of Matanzas suddenly shut down. Authorities said they were scrambling to get the facility back online, but it was unclear when that might occur.

Thursday night, Cuban authorities had already taken drastic steps to curb energy use, <a href="https://apnews.com/article/cuba-power-outage-blackout-4ae305120a99fec17c79e7621e8dac4b">announcing the shutdown of schools</a>, many government offices and entertainment sites like discos. Authorities ordered nonessential businesses to halt production.

“We have had to paralyze the economy to guarantee a minimum of electrical service,” Prime Minister Manuel Marrero said in an announcement Thursday night on state-run television.

William Leogrande, a Cuba specialist at American University, said the only other time in recent memory that the island had suffered a nationwide blackout was in 2022, after Hurricane Ian slammed into the country. But that was a natural disaster. Friday’s collapse comes after several years of temporary blackouts because of a shortage of imported oil and the cash-strapped government’s insufficient maintenance of the creaky grid.

“The economic consequences are disastrous, because you shut down domestic production” of a whole variety of goods, Leogrande said.

The energy crisis also presents a political risk for the Communist government. It has confronted protests in the past few years from people who have taken to the streets of this tropical  nation to escape hot apartments, including <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/07/12/cuba-anti-government-protests/">nationwide demonstrations in July 2021</a>. “The blackouts have caused more local unrest than just about any other shortage,” Leogrande said.

One worker in central Havana said that she hadn’t paid much attention to the island’s energy problems until the power supply to her locale was suddenly cut Friday morning. “In the three years that I’ve been here, it’s never gone out,” she wrote on X. “Things are really serious.”

Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel tweeted that the government was “giving absolute priority to solving the energy emergency” and “would not rest until [power] is reestablished.”

Cuban authorities have offered a variety of reasons for the intensifying energy crisis. Among the most immediate was bad weather last week that prevented a ship carrying oil from docking and unloading for several days.

Díaz-Canel has also blamed the U.S. trade embargo, saying that the “surging economic war and financial and energy persecution by the United States” made it difficult for Cuba to import oil and industry inputs.

Cuba is suffering its worst economic crisis in decades,  because of the embargo, enhanced U.S. sanctions introduced in recent years, the inefficient policies of the Communist government and the failure of the tourism industry to recover from the covid-19 pandemic.

A lack of food and energy has driven hundreds of thousands of Cubans to migrate in the past few years, with the island <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/cubas-migratory-stampede-has-no-end-sight-2024-09-11/">losing between 10 and 20 percent of its population</a>.

<a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/cuba-implements-emergency-measures-millions-go-without-electricity-2024-10-18/">Cuba is heavily dependent on Venezuela for its oil</a>. But the socialist-run South American country is facing its own energy problems, and has cut supplies to the island. Cuba has received an average of 32,600 barrels a day in the first nine months of this year, around half the amount shipped in the same period of 2023, according to the Reuters news agency.

Lili Gonzalez, who sells soap in the southern Cuban city of Cienfuegos, said the power outage had upended almost every aspect of daily life, including children’s education. “It’s now been 14 hours of electricity blackout and we can’t sleep at all, because our fans don’t work,” she said via the WhatsApp messaging service. “So who would have the energy to take their kid to school anyway?”

Those Cubans who had money turned to generators to get through the crisis. But the average monthly salary is equivalent to only about $10. “I’ve already sold two portable power generators today,” said Anayeisis Aldana, 20, an electronics vendor in Havana.

<i>Lillian Perlmutter and Valentina Muñoz Castillo in Mexico City contributed to this report.</i>

Part of a Post team named as finalists for Pulitzer Prize for reporting on terrorism post-9/11

Overseas Press Club Robert Spiers Benjamin Award for Latin America coverage, 1998

Nieman Fellowship, Harvard University, 2012-13

Knight-Bagehot Fellowship, Columbia University, 1992-93

College of the Holy Cross, BA in English

Mary Beth Sheridan is a correspondent covering Mexico and Central America for The Washington Post. Her previous foreign postings include Rome; Bogota, Colombia; and a five-year stint in Mexico in the 1990s. She has also covered immigration, homeland security and diplomacy for The Post, and served as deputy foreign editor from 2016 to 2018.   

Mary Beth Sheridan

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Cuban electricity system collapses, paralyzing economy

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FILE PHOTO: Massive blackouts roil Cuba

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