A sweeping power outage hit Havana and much of western Cuba on Wednesday, leaving millions without electricity on an island already burdened by ongoing energy shortages and a worsening economic crisis.
Officials reported that the blackout began when a transmission line linking two major thermoelectric plants failed, causing half of the country’s power system to collapse.
Lázaro Guerra, general director at the Ministry of Energy and Mines, said work is underway to restore supply gradually, though the grid remains heavily strained.
For many Cubans, the latest outage feels like another heavy strike in a long list of daily struggles. “This is terrible. The thermoelectric plants keep breaking down,” said Havana resident Liubel Quintana in Spanish. “I have two small children, so this is very bad. The country is in a terrible state. Getting food is hard. Everything is a fight.”
The blackout followed two straight days of peak-hour power shortages and comes less than a year after a nationwide outage in September. Authorities continue to blame the failing infrastructure and fuel scarcity for the repeated breakdowns in Cuba’s weakened electrical network.
Power cuts are also affecting water delivery and causing major setbacks for small private businesses, many of which depend on costly generators they can barely maintain or fuel.
Cuba’s persistent electricity crisis mirrors the larger economic collapse facing the nation, one deepened by pandemic fallout, stronger U.S. sanctions, and a monetary reform that failed to stabilize the currency.
While engineers race to restore power, anger continues to rise. For residents, constant blackouts are no longer rare events but part of everyday life, another hardship in a country where, as Quintana says, “we have to fight for everything.”
