Cuba Struggles After 6th Nationwide Blackout

Cuba's entire electrical grid went down yesterday. It was the sixth time the nation's power has gone out this year.

Cuba’s electricity grid collapsed late on Sunday, the state-owned grid operator said, plunging the island of ‌about 10 million people into darkness as blackouts become more frequent.

The outage follows three nationwide blackouts in July and comes as a US-imposed oil blockade further strains the island’s aging energy infrastructure.

Today, Cuba is still struggling to bring it back on.

Cuba's government was working to restore power after the state-run electric company reported another “total” blackout Sunday night, without specifying the cause. That followed sweeping outages across western Cuba, including the cities of Pinar del Río, Matanzas and Havana.

By Monday, some electricity had been restored in Havana, but much of the Caribbean nation was still disconnected.

Even the partial restoration of power seems to have collapsed again later in the day.

Cuba's national electrical grid collapsed again on Monday, state-run media reported, as the government ‌was trying to reestablish the system following a country-wide blackout on Sunday night...

"Despite the progress made today, an oscillation triggered the collapse," said Lazaro ‌Manuel ⁠Alonso, news director of Cuba's state-run television, in a post shared via social media.

The left routinely blames the U.S. for all of Cuba's problems. And while it's certainly true that the U.S. has a role in this year's blackouts, the fact that Cuba's energy grid hasn't been improved since the 1950s also has a lot to do with it.

While the implementation of Washington’s energy pressure campaign and the sudden evaporation of Venezuelan oil subsidies in early 2026 have undeniably served as acute shocks, they did not create the crisis. They merely exposed a disaster years in the making.

One of the most lasting impacts that the regime has had on Cuba’s economy is the aging of its population. This is a consequence of the constant emigration of the country’s youngest and most productive people, who have fled both persecution and limited economic opportunities. Consequently, the island has a median age of around forty-two, higher than the average across all World Bank income groups, including high-income countries, whose populations tend to be the eldest...

Cuba’s current instability may mark the final episode in an extractive economic model that hollowed out the country’s economy at the Cuban people’s expense. Without a democratic transition and the complete dismantling of the regime’s GAESA-run economic model, Cuba will fall further into poverty, repression, and complete economic failure.

Sec. Rubio spelled out the answer to these problems back in February. The answer is free people (who can vote for a different future) and free markets. Anything else is just doubling down on failure.

“It is important for the people of Cuba to have more freedom – not just political freedom, but economic freedom,” Rubio said. “That’s what this regime has not been willing to give them, because they’re afraid that if the people of Cuba can provide for themselves, they lose control of them.”

Rubio declined to detail the US approach to the island.

“Obviously these things require space and time to do in the right way,” he said. “Certainly their willingness to begin to make openings in this regard is one potential way forward.”

Cuba has made some moves toward economic freedom, but only because it has no choice. Outside observers note that Cuba has done this before, only to claw back that freedom the moment the pressure is off.

Trump long ago suggested Cuba would be the focus of his attention once the situation in Iran was resolved. That still hasn't happened but it will happen eventually. Raul Castro should come up with a plan before it's too late.

Editor’s Note: Thanks to President Trump and his administration’s bold leadership, we are respected on the world stage, and our enemies are being put on notice.

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