Cuba edges toward breakdown as power cuts and US meddling push society to brink | Cuba

KAs Cuba’s national grid collapsed for the third time in 10 days on Tuesday, a collective groan spread through cities and people once again wondered whether the island’s aging electrical system might soon become unrecoverable.

The 777-mile-long Caribbean island, home to 9.5 million people, has been overwhelmed under a six-month oil blockade imposed by the United States as part of a pressure campaign to oust its communist government. But the dire state of Cuba’s infrastructure goes back much further.

“The backbone of the system is still the big power plants,” said Jorge Piñon, a senior energy researcher at the University of Texas, “And they are old, broken and tired.”

With summer temperatures now in the mid-30s and humidity at 80%, tempers are starting to fray on the street. For many, the nationwide collapses dovetail perfectly with already flagging local power outages. While salsa once filled the streets, now the sounds of pots and pans and drums have become the music of the country. cacerolazolar These represent the shared misery of lack of sleep, ruined meals, and fading hopes of salvation.

Power only comes back occasionally. “An hour is not enough to run the pump to get water or charge the phones,” Alberto, a middle-aged man, shouted over the cacophony of pans in Havana’s Vedado neighborhood last week. “People want the government to act as soon as possible.”

But the government says it has little choice. “We have said before, there is a complete fuel shortage,” energy minister Vicente de la O Levy said. “And we don’t have access to spare parts for our thermoelectric units.”

Since January 3, when the US military kidnapped Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, Donald Trump has promised that Cuba would fall. “I think I can do whatever I want with it, whether I release it or take it,” he told reporters at the White House in March.

In efforts to achieve this, Washington used sanctions to destroy Cuba’s industries. Foreign companies doing business on the island, such as hoteliers, airlines, miners and shipping companies, were expelled (or, in cases such as Canadian nickel miner Sherritt, drew up plans to remain on the island by selling their shares to Ray Washburne, a former Trump adviser).

“We have seven containers in Kingston and 40 in China, but we have no idea when or if they will arrive,” said one electric car importer.

In May, a Florida court charged 95-year-old Raúl Castro with murder, 30 years after small planes were shot down in Miami dropping leaflets over Havana, opening up the possibility of a Venezuela-style landing.

Even before the US stepped up pressure, the Cuban state was weak and plagued by hyperinflation during the pandemic. Services are now disrupted. For years, Cuba was one of the safest countries in Latin America; Now crime is on the rise, with fights in the streets, break-ins into cars and homes, and violent robberies. Once ubiquitous police are hard to find, and victims complain they take hours to arrive.

They’re still there though. Prisoners Defenders, a Madrid-based group, said the number of political prisoners had risen to 1,306 and that newcomers such as Héctor Ochoa Vergara “were detained after participating in a peaceful demonstration against power outages and water shortages in Ciego de Ávila.”

But Cuba’s most famous political prisoner, artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, is being held in an unknown location for a week while his visa is being prepared as he heads into exile in the United States on Saturday after serving five years in prison for immoral conduct.

The Cuban government’s determination to appear united appears to be under pressure. For months, the United States has been leaking discussions of a possible agreement on political and economic reforms channeled through Raúl Castro’s grandson, Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro.

Last week, Rodríguez Castro, 42, gave an interview to USA Today, inviting reporters to one of his grandfather’s old offices in Havana, then to the smart city restaurant Antojos. She was wearing Hermès sneakers and a Rolex, and was carrying official documents in a Salvatore Ferragamo bag. “It pains me that many people cannot live the way I live,” he told reporters, adding that although he has nothing to do with politics, “at some point, if the revolution asks me to step in, I will.”

As a result, musicians, academics, former diplomats, and people on the street were outraged by such a display by someone who, in the words of the respected academic Julio César Guanche, “had no recognized institutional public functions.”

But most telling was the anger of young Cubans affiliated with the government. “To usurp the functions of government, to take on a public role for which no one elected you, to declare yourself the spokesman for measures or new directions for the country… is anyone else allowed to do this?” The Con Filo program on Cuban television recently wrote Michel Torres Corona, which is considered the epitome of state propaganda.

Early in the crisis, the United States made it clear that Maduro was looking for someone to be “Delcy,” the equivalent of Venezuelan Delcy Rodríguez, who served as president of Venezuela and is now working hand in hand with Washington. But Michael Bustamante, chair of Cuba and Cuban American studies at the University of Miami, thinks Rodríguez Castro’s USA Today interview could signal a breakdown in such negotiations, calling it a “cry for relevance.”

He said: “I think there’s an open question as to who exactly he was speaking for and whether the channel of communication with him remained.”

Of course, the drums of war are beating once again 90 miles north of the United States, which was in a lull during the World Cup.

In the unlikely surroundings of the Biltmore hotel in Coral Gables, former Florida governor Jeb Bush stood next to the Iranian Shahed drone and tried to tie Cuba to Iran over (unconfirmed) reports that Cuba had purchased 300 attack aircraft. “I think it’s important to recognize that Iran is constantly working with Cuba,” he said. At the White House, Trump said, “We will not let this happen.”

Meanwhile, the Cuban government’s efforts to show willingness by opening up the economy and its announcement of 176 yet-to-be-enforced measures expanding the private sector and inviting investment were dismissed as “superficial smoke signals” by the US State Department.

The grid was reconnected at 7am on Wednesday and people cheered as power was restored to their block. But everyone knew it was temporary, and since then power outages across Cuba have been worse than before.

Laura Garcia, an illustrator and single mother from Havana’s 10 de Octubre district, said her neighbors now live only in the present. “What I’m hearing is a level of desperation that distance doesn’t allow for discussion of the future,” he said. He had been without power for 72 hours, and when asked to comment further he merely mumbled: “What must fall, does not fall.”