Power outage plunges all of Cuba into darkness

Cuba’s power grid failed and the entire nation plunged into darkness Friday, less than a day after the government stressed the need to paralyze the economy to save electricity in the face of major gasoline shortages and large-scale, regular outages.

The electricity went out nationwide Friday morning after a failure at a thermoelectric power plant in Matanzas, east of Havana, Cuba’s Energy Ministry said on the social platform X.

The announcement came less than a day after the prime minister, Manuel Marrero Cruz, held a late-night television address with state officials to discuss the ongoing electricity crisis, which experts said was the worst the nation — long accustomed to food and electricity shortages — had ever experienced.

For weeks, the country has lacked the fuel to run the power grid, which has left large parts of the nation without electricity for up to 12 hours at a time.

When electricity does return, demand surges, further straining the power grid, Marrero said Thursday night as he urged people to cut back on usage.

To ease the strain on the electrical network, officials announced Thursday night that all schools would be closed until Monday and cultural and nonessential activities such as nightclubs would shutter.

Only essential employees should go to work, according to an announcement posted on some government websites, which said hospitals would remain open. Any energy-sucking service that was not vital would be suspended.

“In other words, we have been paralyzing economic activity,” Marrero said.

The crisis was made worse because poor weather conditions had prevented the unloading of fuel deliveries from oil vessels, he said. Cuba’s energy infrastructure is in poor condition, but fuel shortages were the biggest factor for the ongoing problem, he said.

President Miguel Díaz-Canel blamed the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba, which limits the country’s ability to import fuel, for imposing hardship on Cubans.

Miriam Leiva, a dissident journalist in Havana, said the lack of electricity was so bad that Marrero’s own video news conference was delayed by several hours because of technical difficulties, likely from problems with the power grid.

The fact that the nation’s normally secretive leaders took to the airwaves to share detailed updates underscored the severity of the crisis and showed that government officials were nervous and even desperate, she said.

“This is a situation that has never happened before,” Leiva said. “What’s worse is that they have no idea when they are going to resolve it or how.”

The problem was particularly critical outside of Havana, Leiva said, where people go without electricity for long stretches.

The government appeared to be trying to address the challenge by limiting the length of outages in Havana neighborhoods where they feared popular uprisings, she said.

She said she went to a bakery Friday for bread and found none.

“There is no bread, and they don’t know when there will be any,” she said. “Sometimes it’s because there’s no flour.” Today, she added, “it’s because there’s no electricity.”

Alfredo López Valdés, the director general of the national electric company, said the country was working on solutions but added that they would not come quickly.

“We are fighting; we are not sitting on our hands,” López said. “We recognize that the situation is very hard.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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