Cuba’s latest blackout underscores its deepening economic crisis and tensions with U.S.

Large parts of Cu­ba were with­out pow­er on Tues­day af­ter its third black­out in four months un­der­scored the is­land’s deep­en­ing en­er­gy and eco­nom­ic crises and ris­ing po­lit­i­cal ten­sions with U.S. Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump.

Elec­tric­i­ty was slow­ly be­ing re­stored to hos­pi­tals and some of the is­land’s 11 mil­lion res­i­dents, but of­fi­cials warned that its crum­bling pow­er net­work could fail again.

Cu­ba’s ag­ing grid has dras­ti­cal­ly erod­ed in re­cent years, lead­ing to dai­ly out­ages and an in­crease in sig­nif­i­cant black­outs.

The gov­ern­ment blames its woes on a U.S. en­er­gy block­ade af­ter Trump in Jan­u­ary warned of tar­iffs on any coun­try that sells or pro­vides oil to Cu­ba.

Af­ter Cu­ba was plunged in­to dark­ness again, Trump said on Mon­day he be­lieves he’ll have the “ho­n­our of tak­ing Cu­ba.”

“I mean, whether I free it, take it. I think I could do any­thing I want with it,” he said. Trump has de­scribed Cu­ba as a “very weak­ened na­tion.”

The Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion is de­mand­ing that Cu­ba re­lease po­lit­i­cal pris­on­ers and move to­ward po­lit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic lib­er­al­iza­tion in re­turn for a lift­ing of sanc­tions. Trump has al­so raised the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a “friend­ly takeover of Cu­ba.”

Crit­i­cal oil ship­ments from Venezuela were halt­ed af­ter the U.S. at­tacked the South Amer­i­can coun­try in ear­ly Jan­u­ary and ar­rest­ed its then-pres­i­dent, Nicolás Maduro.

While Cu­ba pro­duces 40% of its pe­tro­le­um and has been gen­er­at­ing its own pow­er, it hasn’t been suf­fi­cient to meet de­mand as its elec­tric grid con­tin­ues to crum­ble.

Cu­ba’s Min­istry of En­er­gy and Mines said on X that the is­land had re­stored the elec­tri­cal sys­tem in the west­ern town of Pinar del Rio and the south­east­ern province of Hol­guin and that some “mi­crosys­tems” were be­gin­ning to op­er­ate in var­i­ous ter­ri­to­ries.

State-owned me­dia re­port­ed that by late Mon­day pow­er had been re­stored to 5% of res­i­dents in the cap­i­tal, Ha­vana, rep­re­sent­ing some 42,000 cus­tomers.

The city’s res­i­dents are con­cerned about food spoil­ing and sim­ply try­ing to ma­neu­ver in homes with no light­ing.

“The pow­er out­ages are dri­ving me crazy,” said 48-year-old Dal­ba Obiedo. “Last night I fell down a 27-step stair­case. Now I have to have surgery on my jaw. I fell be­cause the lights went out.”

The Min­istry of En­er­gy and Mines said ear­li­er that there had been a “com­plete dis­con­nec­tion” of the coun­try’s elec­tri­cal sys­tem, not­ing there were no fail­ures in the units that were op­er­at­ing when the grid col­lapsed.

Lázaro Guer­ra, the min­istry’s elec­tric­i­ty di­rec­tor, told state me­dia on Mon­day that crews were try­ing to restart sev­er­al ther­mo­elec­tric plants, which are key to restor­ing pow­er.

Ha­vana res­i­dent Tomás David Velázquez Fe­lipe, 61, said the re­lent­less out­ages make him think that Cubans who can, should just pack up and leave the is­land.

“What lit­tle we have to eat spoils,” he said. “Our peo­ple are too old to keep suf­fer­ing.” —HA­VANA (AP)

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Sto­ry by MILEXSY DURÁN | As­so­ci­at­ed Press