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

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.

The government blamed the failure on a combination of high electrical demand, poorly maintained energy facilities, a lack of fuel to run them, and stringent US sanctions. Officials, including Cuba’s President Miguel Díaz-Canel, have promised that the government is working around the clock to restore power to the island.

The government has restored full functionality to some hospitals, but others run on generators, a luxury not accessible to most Cubans. This could become a problem the longer the blackout continues, as the fuel generators require to operate is in short supply.

As of Monday, much of the capital Havana was back online, according to energy officials. Technicians also restored functionality to the Antonio Guiteras plant, providing at least some power to other regions, although the eastern tip of the island remains offline as of this writing.

Why is Cuba’s energy problem so severe?

Cuba’s electrical grid is so fragile due to a combination of factors: a lack of investment in infrastructure (of all kinds, not just the power grid); a lack of access to fuel to run the power plants; and impeded access to the global market are chief among them.

The Cuban government’s inability or unwillingness to maintain the country’s electrical plants is the direct cause of the blackouts; with most thermoelectric plants offline for one reason or another, Cuba was dependent on one plant to supply power to the island — which created this week’s crisis.

But a broader problem has to do with Cuba’s economy and its ability to access the fuel it needs to run its power plants. 

Before the collapse of the Soviet Union, Cuba essentially bartered its sugar for oil from the USSR. Following the USSR’s collapse in 1991, Cuba suffered an oil shortage and an economic crisis until Hugo Chavez was elected president of Venezuela and began offering Cuba below-market-rate oil in exchange for Cuban medical services.

“Nowadays, you’re seeing a situation where all these countries have issues of their own to deal with. Russia is dealing with Ukraine. Venezuela is dealing with its own internal turmoil,” Daniel Pedreira, a professor of politics and international studies at Florida International University, told Vox. Russia, Venezuela, and Mexico still provide Cuba with oil, but it’s just not enough to meet the country’s needs.

Without access to discounted fuel, the Cuban government has had to turn to the open market. But fuel is more expensive there, and the country is short on cash. Cuba has little access to foreign currency reserves because its exports are low. Furthermore, two major sources of foreign currency — remittances from abroad and tourism — decreased under the Trump administration and Covid-19 pandemic following new US restrictions on US-Cuba relations and travel restrictions to stop the spread of disease.

What effect will the blackout have on Cubans?

The blackout itself is a crisis, but Sunday’s hurricane compounds it. Oscar hit the eastern province of Guantánamo, causing unprecedented levels of flooding given that area’s extremely dry climate. The continued power outage has hindered efforts to evacuate the region and complicated search-and-rescue efforts. Six people have been reported dead in the area since Oscar hit, though the circumstances of their deaths aren’t clear. 

In the rest of the country, some Cubans have been on the street protesting, despite the sharp warnings from Díaz-Canel, who said in a public address that such actions would not be tolerated and “will be prosecuted with the rigor that the revolutionary laws contemplate.”

At the moment, protests don’t seem to have grown into a mass movement for political change. According to Pedreira, Cubans do not seem to hold Díaz-Canel with the same regard as they did the Castro regime. But the regime does have significant power to enact violence against protesters, and crackdowns against dissidents have been on the rise in recent years. 

“If these blackouts really become even longer lasting, and really are the catalyst for political change or some sort of mass uprising, will the Cuban troops fire on Cuban civilians en masse?” Pedreira said. “We would have to wait and see if it happens or not. But as far as capacity, as far as the ability to do it, [the government] certainly can.”

Even if there were a significant call for regime change, there’s nothing to change to, according to William LeoGrande, a professor of government and specialist in Latin American affairs at American University.

“Discontent has been growing and is pretty widespread right now, [but] there isn’t any real organized opposition,” LeoGrande said. “The government makes it a lot easier for you to leave the country than to stay there and be a dissident. And so, you know, that’s what people do. And even ordinary people who are just discontent and fed up, their inclination is just to leave.”

This crisis could fuel a further exodus; an estimated 1 million Cubans have left the country in the past three years, the largest such migration in the country’s history. One Havana-based economist, Omar Everleny, told the New York Times he’s already starting to see a new wave of emigration: “Anyone who was thinking of leaving is now accelerating those plans. Now you’re hearing ‘I am going to sell my house and go.’”

As for the government and those who stay, LeoGrande suspects “they’ll muddle through because they always seem to find a way to muddle through.”