Power cuts persist six months into the Trump administration's oil blockade, after the Guiteras plant failure blacked out some 70 percent of Cuba and set off protests. Parliament has now opened agriculture, banking and nearly every sector to private business.
Cuba's national electricity supply depends heavily on a small number of ageing thermal power stations, of which the Antonio Guiteras plant in Matanzas is the largest. Because so much generating capacity is concentrated in individual units, a single failure can cascade across the grid and darken much of the country at once, as happened on 26 July when about 70 percent of the island lost power, according to Rzeczpospolita. Blackouts on this scale are not only an infrastructure problem but a political flashpoint: the latest outage was followed by renewed anti-government protests. The topic therefore tracks two intertwined threads — the technical condition of Cuba's power system and the public reaction to its failures.
Cuba's parliament approved a list of 176 measures on 18 June that opens almost every sector of the economy, including agriculture and banking, to private actors, according to Le Monde. It is the island's furthest move away from a state-run economy so far.
Six months after the Trump administration imposed its oil blockade, Cubans are living through prolonged power cuts with no electricity for fans or air conditioning, the New York Times reported. Its correspondent Jack Nicas described residents unable to sleep in the heat.
About 70 percent of Cuba lost electricity on 26 July after a breakdown at the Antonio Guiteras power plant in Matanzas, the country's largest, according to Rzeczpospolita. The outage triggered renewed anti-government protests on the island.