The nationwide blackout left more than 10 million people without electricity as the island grapples with a U.S. oil embargo and crumbling infrastructure. Restoration efforts have been slow, with more than 90% of Havana still in darkness.
Cuba’s national electricity grid collapsed Saturday evening for the third time in March NPR, plunging the entire island into darkness and leaving approximately 10 million people without power.
The Cuban Electric Union reported the blackout was caused by an unexpected failure of a generating unit at the Nuevitas thermoelectric plant in Camagüey province NPR. According to the Ministry of Energy and Mines, the failure triggered a cascading effect across machines that were online, bringing down the entire system. Authorities immediately activated isolated “micro-islands” of generating units to provide emergency power to hospitals and water systems.
The outage marked the second grid collapse in less than a week and came as Cuba continues to struggle with what officials describe as an unprecedented energy crisis. The previous nationwide blackout occurred on Monday NPR, and restoration from that incident had taken several days.
By Sunday morning, only 72,638 customers in Havana had power restored — representing just 8.4% of the capital’s roughly 2 million residents CiberCuba. Seven substations and seven distribution circuits had been brought back online, but the vast majority of the city remained dark. Power had been restored to five hospitals, but water supply had not resumed in any area.
The blackouts have become a grim routine for Cubans, disrupting every aspect of daily life. Without electricity, refrigerators stop working and food spoils. Water pumps cannot operate. Hospitals have canceled surgeries. In the capital, people navigate streets using phone lights or torches, while some restaurants in the tourist district stay open thanks to generators Al Jazeera.
“I wonder if we are going to be like this our whole lives. You can’t live like this,” Nilo Lopez, a 36-year-old taxi driver, told AFP Al Jazeera.
Suleydi Crespo, a 33-year-old mother of two, described the cascade of problems: “With the blackout and low voltage, my refrigerator broke — that was today. The day before yesterday, the voltage also dropped around 10 at night. If there’s no electricity tomorrow, we won’t be able to get water.” Fortune
Dagnay Alarcón, a 35-year-old vendor, expressed resignation: “We have to get used to continuing our usual routine. What else can we do? We have to try to survive. Get used to events, with or without electricity.” Fortune
The root causes of Cuba’s electrical crisis are both structural and geopolitical. Power outages have become relatively common over the past two years due to breakdowns in aging infrastructure, compounded by daily blackouts of up to 12 hours caused by fuel shortages NPR. But the situation has deteriorated sharply in recent months.
Vice Minister of Energy and Mines Argelio Abad Vigo explained this week that Cuba has gone three months without receiving supplies of diesel, fuel oil, gasoline, aviation fuel or liquefied petroleum gas Fortune. President Miguel Díaz-Canel has said the island produces barely 40% of the fuel it needs to power its economy NPR.
The immediate trigger for the fuel crisis came in January, when U.S. President Donald Trump warned of tariffs on any country that sells or provides oil to Cuba NPR. The move effectively cut off the island’s access to international fuel markets. Critical oil shipments from Venezuela, Cuba’s longtime ally, were halted after the U.S. removed Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro from power CNBC.
No oil has been imported to the island since January 9 Al Jazeera, forcing airlines to curtail flights and devastating the tourism sector — a crucial source of foreign currency for the island.
The Trump administration has made clear that lifting the fuel embargo comes with conditions. The administration is demanding that Cuba release political prisoners and move toward political and economic liberalization in return for a lifting of sanctions NPR.
Trump’s rhetoric has grown increasingly aggressive. On Monday, as Cuba endured a nationwide blackout, Trump declared from the Oval Office: “I do believe I’ll be having the honour of taking Cuba. It’s a big honour, I mean, whether I free it, take it. I think I can do anything I want with it.” ITV News
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a Cuban American and fierce critic of the island’s leadership, appeared to confirm that the administration was demanding that Díaz-Canel and other officials step down. “The people in charge, they don’t know how to fix (Cuba’s economy),” Rubio said. “So they have to get new people in charge. That’s what has to happen.” ITV News
Cuban officials have responded defiantly. Díaz-Canel said in a speech to international activists bringing humanitarian aid that “any external aggressor will encounter an unbreakable resistance.” CNN Cuba’s top diplomat for U.S. affairs, Carlos Fernández De Cossio, told reporters Friday: “Neither the president nor the position of any leader in Cuba is up for negotiation with the United States.” ITV News
Despite the harsh rhetoric, both sides have confirmed they are engaged in talks. Last week, Díaz-Canel confirmed that Cuban officials were speaking with their U.S. counterparts about negotiations to end the fuel embargo, though Cuba has made clear it will not negotiate about its political system.
The humanitarian toll of the crisis continues to mount. Humanitarian organizations began delivering aid to Cuba by air on Friday, including solar panels, food and medicine CBS News. The blackouts have forced the government to postpone surgeries for tens of thousands of people.
Social unrest has been growing alongside the power failures. Videos circulating on social media show residents in Santiago de Cuba banging pots and pans — a form of protest known as “cacerolazo” — as they demand electricity CBS News. Protests also erupted hours after the October 2024 blackout began, with demonstrators in the Santos Suárez neighborhood of Havana constructing makeshift barricades in the streets Wikipedia. In response, the government cut internet access and deployed police to clear protesters.
Tomás David Velázquez Felipe, a 61-year-old resident of Havana, said the relentless outages make him think that Cubans who can should just pack up and leave the island. “What little we have to eat spoils. Our people are too old to keep suffering.” CBS News
Technical teams were working Sunday to unify isolated power grids in western and central regions before attempting to reconnect the eastern provinces to the national system Bloomberg, according to energy official Lázaro Guerra Hernández. However, the scale of the collapse means restoration will be gradual and could take days.
The Cuban Electric Union warned that recovery would proceed slowly, “as the conditions of the system allow,” urging citizens to stay informed through official channels.
The crisis represents a critical test for Cuba’s communist government, which has weathered previous periods of severe economic hardship, including the “Special Period” following the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union. But the current situation — with complete fuel cutoffs, aging infrastructure, and mounting political pressure from Washington — presents challenges of a different magnitude.
For ordinary Cubans enduring their third nationwide blackout in a month, the question is no longer whether the lights will come back on, but how much longer they can sustain life in the dark.