Cuba has suffered its 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 Carribbean island was already struggling to keep the lights on before US President Donald Trump in January cut off its oil supplies, depleting the dwindling supply of fuel for its power plants.
“There has been a total disconnection from the national electricity generation system,” the UNE power utility wrote on X on Monday, adding that it was “investigating the causes.”
The blackout is the eighth on the island of 9.6 million people since late 2024.
“Living like this is agony,” said Meyboll Font, a 51-year-old self-employed social media community manager.
Font said that her Havana neighbourhood 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 Wi-Fi, no electricity, we can’t work,” said a young software programmer working for a tourism start-up in another neighbourhood.
Related
Without power
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 US 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.
