Cuba was on Friday racing to restore electricity after the failure of the island’s biggest power plant caused a nationwide blackout, coming on the heels of weeks of extended outages across the cash-strapped country.
The capital, Havana, came to a virtual standstill as schools closed, public transportation ground to a halt and traffic lights stopped functioning.
Lazaro Guerra, the head of electricity supply at the Cuban Ministry of Energy and Mines, said the process of restoring power to Cuba’s 11 million inhabitants was in its early stages.
Photo: Reuters
“Currently, we have some level of electricity generation” that would be used to start up power plants in several regions of the country, he said.
Guerra previously told state media that the power system had collapsed due to the unexpected shutdown of the Antonio Guiteras power plant, the biggest of the island’s eight decrepit coal-fired power plants.
The blackout followed weeks of power outages, lasting up to 20 hours a day in some provinces, which prompted Cuban Prime Minister Manuel Marrero on Thursday to declare an “energy emergency.”
The government on Thursday suspended all nonessential public services to prioritize electricity supply to homes.
Schools across the country have been closed until tomorrow. Authorities in Havana said hospitals and other essential facilities, which are powered by generators, would remain open.
“This is crazy,” said Eloy Fon, an 80-year-old retiree living in central Havana. “It shows the fragility of our electricity system... We have no reserves, there is nothing to sustain the country; we are living day-to-day.”
Barbara Lopez, a 47-year-old digital content creator, fumed that she had “barely been able to work for two days and now this: What do I do?”
“It’s the worst I’ve seen in 47 years,” she said. “They’ve really messed up now ... we have no power or mobile data.”
For three months, Cubans have been battling chronic blackouts that had become longer and more frequent.
The national energy shortfall has hovered at about 30 percent, but on Thursday it rose to nearly 50 percent of the island’s needs, causing widespread frustration and anger.
Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel on Friday wrote on social media that the government would “not rest” until the lights were back on.
He blamed the situation on Cuba’s difficulties in acquiring fuel for its power plants, which he attributed to the tightening of a six-decade-long US trade embargo under former president Donald Trump.
Cuba is in the throes of its worst economic crisis since the collapse of the Soviet Union, a key ally in the early 1990s — marked by sky-high inflation and shortages of food, medicine, fuel and even water.
With no relief in sight, many Cubans have emigrated.
More than 700,000 entered the US between January 2022 and August, US officials said.
In July 2021, blackouts were the spark for an unprecedented outpouring of public anger. Thousands of Cubans took to the streets shouting “We are hungry” and “Freedom” in a rare challenge to the government. One person was killed and dozens were injured in the protests. Mexico-based human rights organization Justicia 11J reported that 600 people detained during the unrest remain in prison.
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