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(Bloomberg) — Cuba’s electric grid suffered a total collapse Monday as the nation struggles with crumbling infrastructure and a de facto US oil blockade that has pushed the communist-run island to the brink.
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The national union of electrical workers said in a post on X that the entire system had gone off line and it was investigating the causes. Cuba’s energy ministry confirmed the outage and said recovery work is underway.
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President Donald Trump’s administration has been steadily increasing pressure on Cuba in hopes of ending nearly seven decades of one-party rule. Since January, Washington has only allowed a single Russian tanker to deliver oil, exacerbating already-chronic power outages on the island of 10 million people. In May, Havana announced it had run entirely out of the fuel.
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Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez said last week he will be traveling to New York on Monday to denounce the US energy blockade at the United Nations General Assembly
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Along with calling out Washington’s “aggressive actions,” Rodríguez said on X he would also use the event to “defend our sovereign right to live without an energy stranglehold, without external suffocation, without coercion, without threats of a bloodbath, without collective punishment.”
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Even when fuel is flowing, the island’s aging, oil-fired power plants regularly fail as domestic crude production only covers about two-fifths of demand. In March, the island saw two massive blackouts, and it suffered a half dozen nationwide outages last year.
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Facing its worst crisis in half a century, Cuba’s leadership rolled out almost 200 free-market proposals last month. That announcement, however, hasn’t won it any respite from Washington’s pressure campaign.
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The UN, meanwhile, has warned that ever-tighter US sanctions risk sparking a humanitarian crisis on the island.
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(Updates with foreign minister’s trip to UN and additional context, beginning in fourth paragraph.)
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