Cuba's power grid collapsed on Saturday, leaving the country without electricity for the third time in March. The communist government is grappling with decaying infrastructure and a US-imposed oil blockade, according to officials.
The Cuban Electric Union, under the Ministry of Energy and Mines, announced a total blackout across the island. The union later attributed the outage to an unexpected failure of a generating unit at the Nuevitas thermoelectric plant in Camagüey province.
“From that moment, a cascading effect occurred in the machines that were online,” said a ministry report. Authorities activated “micro-islands” of generating units to power vital centers, hospitals, and water systems.
Power outages have become common in the past two years due to ageing infrastructure breakdowns, compounded by daily blackouts of up to 12 hours from fuel shortages. Saturday's outage was the second in a week and the third in March.
The blackouts severely disrupt daily life, reducing working hours, hindering cooking and refrigeration, and forcing hospitals to cancel some surgeries. President Miguel Díaz-Canel said Cuba has not received oil from foreign suppliers for three months, producing barely 40% of needed fuel.
The government blames the outages on a US energy blockade, intensified after Donald Trump warned of tariffs on countries supplying oil to Cuba. Trump demands political reforms and has raised the possibility of a “friendly takeover.” The removal of Venezuela's leader also halted critical oil shipments from that ally.
