Cuba is suffering from a nationwide blackout after its electrical grid collapsed. Power went out across the island on FridayTropical Storm Oscar hit the island as a Category 1 just days before Hurricane Sunday.
Although power was partially restored in some areas, including much of Havana, millions of people – particularly in rural areas and eastern provinces, which suffered hurricane damage – were 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 does not appear to be a long-term solution to the crisis.
The Cuban government regularly imposes hour-long blackouts in parts of the country to conserve fuel needed to run electrical plants. But the current outage is different. It was triggered by a breakdown at one of the country’s oldest electrical stations and affected every aspect of life for ordinary people: they couldn’t cool or light their homes, food was going bad in the fridge, they couldn’t cook, and many couldn’t access water. or wash
Although the situation has now reached a crisis point, it is a tragedy that has evolved over time and underscores Cuba’s fragile economy, its need for development, and its tenuous place in world politics.
How did Cuba lose all power?
The crisis began late Friday afternoon, when the Antonio Guiteras power plant, one of the country’s largest, went offline. Seven of the country’s eight thermoelectric plants, which generate electricity for the island, were not operating or under maintenance before the failure of the Guiteras plant. So when Guiteras plant closedThere was no other power source.
Since Friday’s failure, the grid has been partially or completely out Collapsed three more times.
The government blamed the failure on a combination of high electricity demand, poorly maintained power facilities, a lack of fuel to run them and tough US sanctions. Officials, including Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel, have pledged that the government is working around the clock to restore power to the island.
The government has made a full recovery Some hospital functionsBut others run on generators, a luxury not accessible to most Cubans. This could become a problem the longer the blackout continues, as the supply required to operate the fuel generators is low.
Much of the capital, Havana, was back online as of Monday, according to energy officials. Technicians also restored the functionality of the Antonio Guiteras plantOther areas provide at least some power, though the eastern end of the island remains offline as of this writing.
Why is Cuba’s energy problem so serious?
Cuba’s electrical grid is so fragile due to a combination of factors: lack of investment in infrastructure (of all kinds, not just the power grid); lack of access to fuel to run power plants; And barriers to entry into global markets are chief among them.
The blackout was directly caused by the Cuban government’s inability or unwillingness to maintain the country’s electrical plants; With most thermoelectric plants offline for one reason or another, the island of Cuba was dependent on a plant to supply electricity — which created this week’s crisis.
But a broader issue relates to Cuba’s economy and its ability to access the fuel needed to run its power plants.
Before the fall of the Soviet Union, Cuba mainly traded its sugar for oil from the USSR. After the fall of the USSR in 1991, Cuba faced an oil shortage and economic crisis until Hugo Chávez was elected president of Venezuela and began supplying Cuba with below-market oil in exchange for Cuban medical services.
“Nowadays, you see a situation where all these countries have to deal with their own problems. Russia is dealing with Ukraine. Venezuela is dealing with its own internal turmoil,” Daniel Pedreira, professor of politics and international studies at Florida International University, told Vox. Russia, Venezuela and Mexico still supply Cuba with oil, but it is not enough to meet the country’s needs.
The Cuban government has had to turn to the open market without getting concessional fuel. But fuel is more expensive there, and the country is short on cash. Cuba has little access to foreign exchange reserves because its exports are low. Moreover, the two main sources of foreign currency – remittances from abroad and tourism – have declined under the Trump administration and after new US restrictions on US-Cuba relations over the Covid-19 pandemic and travel restrictions to prevent the spread of the disease.
What effect will the blackout have on the Cubans?
The blackout is a crisis in itself, but Sunday’s hurricane made it even more complicated. Oscar hit the eastern province of GuantanamoThe region’s extremely dry climate causes unprecedented levels of flooding Continued power outages have complicated efforts to evacuate the area and search and rescue efforts. Six people have been reported dead in the area since Oscar struck, though the circumstances of their deaths are unclear.
In the rest of the country, some Cubans protested in the streets despite a sharp warning from Díaz-Canel, who said in a public address that such actions would not be tolerated and “Revolutionary laws will be prosecuted with the rigor with which they are treated“
Right now, the protests don’t seem to have turned into mass movements for political change. According to Pedreira, Cubans don’t seem to hold Diaz-Canel in the same way as the Castro regime. But the regime has significant powers to use violence against protesters, and crackdowns on dissidents have been on the rise in recent years.
“If these blackouts really do last longer, and really do catalyze political change or some kind of mass coup, will the Cuban military open fire on Cuban civilians en masse?” Dr. Pedreira. “We have to wait and see if that happens. But as far as the ability, as far as the ability to do so, [the government] Of course it can.”
According to William Leogrand, a government professor and expert on Latin American affairs at American University, while there is a significant call for regime change, there is nothing to change.
“Dissatisfaction is growing and quite widespread at the moment, [but] There is no real organized opposition,” Leogrande said. “The government makes it much easier for you to leave the country than to stay there and be a dissident. And so, you know, that’s what people do. Even ordinary people who are just disaffected and bored tend to just leave.”
The crisis could fuel another exodus; An approximation One million Cubans have left the country in the past three yearsThis is the largest such migration in the country’s history. Omar Everleny, a Havana-based economist, reported this information New York Times He has already begun to see a new wave of emigration: “Anyone who was thinking of leaving is now accelerating those plans. Now you hear ‘I’m selling my house and moving away.’
As for the government and those who live, Leogrande suspects “they will mess up because they always seem to find a way to mess up.”
