Cubans struggle with an extended power outage and a new tropical storm

HAVANA (AP) — Cuba’s capital was largely paralyzed on Monday and the rest of the island braced for the fourth night of a massive blackout that has generated a handful of small protests and a stern government warning that any unrest will be punished.
Hurricane Oscar was crossing the island’s eastern coast with winds and heavy rain after a night that saw protests of several dozen people in urban neighborhoods like Santos Suárez and central Havana.
Some banged pots and pans in the streets, while others demonstated from their balconies. Protesters who said they have no water blocked at least one street with garbage.
The Cuban government has a low tolerance for civil disobedience and President Miguel Díaz-Canel warned on national television Sunday that “we’re not going to allow any vandalism, or let anyone disturb people’s tranquility.”
The prolonged nationwide blackout followed a massive outage Thursday night, part of energy problems that led to the largest protests in Cuba in almost 30 years, in July 2021. Those were followed by smaller local protests in October 2022 and March 2024.
It’s all part of a deep economic crisis that has prompted the exodus of more than half a million Cubans to the U.S., with thousands more heading to Europe. That has led to a reduction in the availability of rationed food for those who do not leave.
Power remains relatively cheap but increasingly unavailable. The Cuban government has said that it’s producing 700 megawatts when peak demand can hit 3 gigawatts. About 50% of Havana has intermittent power.
People gather in a plaza in Havana as Cuba is hit by an island-wide blackout on Oct. 18. Photo by Norlys Perez/Reuters
Energy Minister Vicente de la O Levy said in a news conference he hoped that more reliable electricity will be restored by Monday or Tuesday morning but classes remained closed through at least Thursday.
He said that Oscar, which made landfall on the eastern coast Sunday evening, will bring “an additional inconvenience” to Cuba’s recovery since it will touch a “region of strong (electricity) generation.” Key Cuban power plants, such as Felton in the city of Holguín, and Renté in Santiago de Cuba, are located in the area.
Oscar later weakened to a tropical storm but its effects were forecast to linger in the island through Monday.
Many of Havana’s 2 million people resorted to cooking with improvised wood stoves on the streets before their food went bad in refrigerators.
In tears, Ylenis de la Caridad Napoles, mother of a 7-year-old girl, said she is reaching a point of “desperation.”
The failure of the Antonio Guiteras plant on Friday was the latest problem with energy distribution in a country where electricity has been restricted and rotated among different regions at different times. The status of Cuba’s other power plants was unclear.
People lined up for hours on Sunday to buy bread in the few bakeries that could reopen.
Some Cubans like Rosa Rodríguez had been without electricity for four days.
“We have millions of problems, and none of them are solved,” said Rodríguez. “We must come to get bread, because the local bakery is closed, and they bring it from somewhere else.”
The blackout was considered to be Cuba’s worst since Hurricane Ian hit the island as a Category 3 storm in 2022 and damaged power installations. It took days for the government to fix them.
The Cuban government announced emergency measures to slash electricity demand, including suspending school and university classes, shutting down some state-owned workplaces and canceling nonessential services.
Local authorities said the outage stemmed from increased demand from small- and medium-sized companies and residential air conditioners. Later, the blackout got worse because of breakdowns in old thermoelectric plants that haven’t been properly maintained, and the lack of fuel to operate some facilities.
Cuba’s energy minister said the country’s grid would be in better shape if there had not been two more partial blackouts as authorities tried to reconnect on Saturday. De la O Levy also said Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela and Russia, among other nations, had offered to help.