Is Cuba in a Death Sprial?

Post Reply New Topic

Cuba has endured one of its toughest weeks in years after a nationwide blackout which left around 10 million Cubans without power for several days. Adding to the Caribbean island’s problems, Hurricane Oscar left a trail of destruction along the north-eastern coast, leaving several dead and causing widespread damage. For some communities in Cuba the energy crisis is the new normal.

As Cuba approached its fourth day without power this week, Yusely Perez turned to the only fuel source left available to her: firewood.

Her neighbourhood in Havana hasn’t received its regular deliveries of liquified gas cannisters for two months. So once the island’s entire electrical grid went down, prompting a nationwide blackout, Yusely was forced to take desperate measures.

(The government said) Normal service would be resumed soon, the Cuban minister insisted. But no sooner did he utter those words than there was another total collapse of the grid, the fourth in 48 hours.

Marbeyis Aguilera the 28-year-old mother-of-three is getting used to living without electricity.
For Marbeyis, even “normal service” being restored still means most of the day without power. In fact, what the residents of Havana endured for a few days is what daily life is like in her village of Aguacate in the province of Artemisa, outside Havana. “We’ve had no power for six days”, she says, brewing coffee on a makeshift charcoal stove inside her breeze-block, tin-roofed shack.

“It came on for a couple of hours last night and then went out again. We have no choice but to cook like this or use firewood to provide something warm for the children,” she adds. Her two gas hobs and one electric ring sit idle on the kitchen top, the room filling with smoke. The community is in dire need of state assistance, she says, listing their most urgent priorities. “First, electricity. Secondly, we need water. Food is running out. People with dollars, sent from abroad, can buy food. But we don’t have any so we can’t buy anything.” “It’s especially hard on the children”, Marbeyis adds, her eyes tearing up, “because when they say I want this or that, we have nothing to give them.”

Amid it all, on the north-eastern coast, the situation got even worse. As people were still coping with the blackout, Hurricane Oscar made landfall, bringing high winds, flash flooding and ripping roofs from homes. The storm may have passed. But Cubans know that such is the precarious state of the island’s energy infrastructure that the next nationwide blackout could come at any time.

Source: Cubans endure days without power as energy crisis hits hard

As Cuba grapples with blackouts and a deepening economic crisis, Mexico has sent nearly half a million barrels of crude oil and diesel in just a span of days. It comes at a time when shipments of Russian and Venezuelan oil that long kept the island afloat have largely petered out, leaving Mexico as one of Cuba's few lifelines.

Approximately 412,000 barrels of crude oil from Mexico’s state-run oil company, Pemex, arrived at the port city of Cienfuegos either early Thursday morning or late Wednesday night. An additional 67,000 barrels of what appears to be diesel were sent Wednesday night and are set to arrive in Santiago de Cuba early next week.

The approximately $31 million in fuel comes on top of at least $300 million in fuel sent by Mexico to Cuba since the beginning of 2023.

The shipment comes at a dire moment in Cuba, where large-scale blackouts left 10 million people — already reeling from a deepening economic crisis — without power for days earlier this month.

Cuba's government has faced simmering frustrations and rare protests after it sharply hiked gas prices, further squeezing the pocketbooks of Cubans, who struggle to pay for the most basic food items, like eggs and chicken. Cuba's power grid has been left in disrepair and the government has long failed to invest in alternative energies like solar power, despite a plethora of sunshine.

As a result, Cuba's main source of power has been fossil fuels. It long depended on its regional ally Venezuela until aid disappeared as the oil-rich nation fell into crisis. In recent years, Cuba leaned on Russia, which was sending hundreds of millions of dollars in fuel just two years ago. That helped to alleviate a massive shortfall in Cuba’s supplies while simultaneously helping to ease the weight of international sanctions on Russia for its invasion of Ukraine. But much of that support has dried up despite Russian promises to send more aid. A 119,000-barrel shipment of Russian fuel in September was the first seen in months.

Source: Mexican fuel flows to Cuba as the island faces blackouts and the loss of Russian and Venezuelan oil

IMO the U.S. government really needs to bury the hatchet with Cuba already. Time to end the United States embargo against Cuba -- "the most enduring trade embargo in modern history," according to Wikipedia.

‘There is no money’: Cuba fears total collapse amid grid failure and financial crisis

Maria Elena Cárdenas is 76 and lives in a municipal shelter on Amargura Street in Havana’s colonial old town. The building has an elegant past, but for the last few days Maria has been cooking with sticks she had found on the street.

“You know, we Cubans manage the best we can,” she said. She lives in the shelter because her home collapsed, a regular occurrence in the poorest, oldest parts of the beautiful city.

Cuba’s government has spent the last days attempting to get the island’s national grid functioning after repeated island-wide blackouts. Without power, sleep becomes difficult in the heat, food spoils and the water supply fails.

A week after the blackout, the island has returned to the status quo ante with regular power cuts of up to 20 hours a day. But the crisis has left a deep, melancholy dread about the future.

“Cubans have a cheerful idiosyncrasy,” said Julio César Rodríguez, 52. “Even when things are bad we laugh. But this is really bad.”

This current crisis began on 17 October, when an order went out for all non-essential state workers to go home.

The effort to save power didn’t save the system, and a day later, the island went dark. Antonio Guiteras, one of the main power stations, shut down, crashing all the other big generating stations in the system.

“It’s very hard to restart a power station,” said a retired engineer from Antonio Guiteras, who asked to remain anonymous. “You need to produce a lot of electricity just to get it going.”

Antonio Guiteras was built in 1989, and is now battered and obsolete. “The truth is that it was built rotten,” said the engineer. He told harrowing stories of working with faulty safety equipment, political management who would disappear when problems arose and a system long pushed to its limit.

“There was a scheduled maintenance programme, but it was never followed,” he said. “The requirements were too tight. We were told: ‘The factory has to produce, so patch it up.’”

For most of its existence, Cuba’s government has relied on the largesse of allies – first Russia and then Venezuela. But those countries, facing their own difficulties, have cut supplies heavily. “It’s like trying to keep a sinking ship afloat with corks,” said one European diplomat.

Instead a deal has been cut with a Chinese firm to provide the materials for a slew of solar farms in return for access to Cuba’s nickel deposits. But with well over 10% of Cuba’s population having fled the economic crisis on the island in the last two years, there is scepticism whether the expertise remains to build such systems.

-------------------------------------------
Solar systems are an expensive path to electrical generation. They need to be well maintained. This seems like all China may want is to lock in Cuba's nickel deposits. It may drive the country deeper into debt and depression for its people.

Despite recent crude oil and diesel deliveries from Mexico, Cuba continues to struggle with power blackouts and a worsening economic crisis. Fossil fuels are the main source of power on the island, and the state has long depended on Venezuela and Russia for those resources to help power the nation. But now shipments of Russian and Venezuelan oil have largely petered out, leaving over 10 million Cubans facing more large-scale blackouts.

Mexico has come to Cuba's aid with nearly 500,000 barrels of crude oil and diesel, oil shipment. "Mexico now is key because Venezuela has dropped its supplies to Cuba, Russian oil, it's nowhere to be seen," said Jorge Piñon, senior research fellow at the University of Texas at Austin's Energy Center, which tracks the shipments.

Despite the new delivery, Cuban Minister of Energy and Mines Vicente de la O Levy said it will still be impossible to keep the lights on during peak hours. He said that talks continue with Russia, Venezuela and Colombia on getting more help with resources. Cuba's national grid collapsed four times in a week in late October after the island's largest power plant, Antonio Guiteras, failed. And while the Mexican oil delivery has helped, many Cubans are still without power and some are lacking access to clean water.

At its core, this crisis can be linked to the Fidel Castro-led revolution in 1959. In 1960, America placed an economic embargo on all exports to Cuba, with exceptions for food and medicine. For the 62 years that have followed since the embargo, Cuba has relied heavily on the importation of crude oil for power. Despite that, the Cuban government blames the US economic embargo for its recent woes.

The lack of power saw the government shut down several institutions, including schools. In some situations, citizens were left cooking their food on wood stoves in the streets. Modesto Hernández, who lives in central Havana, said on Tuesday that he and others "don't know anything about what is going on". Extreme weather has also impacted Cuba's power supply, and the situation has led to street protests as residents become desperate. "There are lines everywhere you go," Havana resident Carlos López said. "You get to a place and there are obstacles and obstacles." However, the president has vowed to prosecute power outage protesters and increased police patrols in areas of Havana.

Source: Latest oil delivery not enough to stop Cuba from switching off the power amidst blackout crisis

I don't really disagree, but the Cuban government could probably bring about an end to it if they were to approach the US with a sincere proposal to discuss the situation. Supposedly they don't because the whole thing is 100% the responsibility of the US, so their moral convictions prevent them from doing such a "degrading" thing.

I happen to think that the isolation due to the embargo gives them a feeling of security, and they fear the change and end to the embargo would bring about.

Many years ago the United States produced the first atomic bomb and used it to end the Second World War. But Russian spies in the U.S. stole the process. The two nations began to become aggressive. Russia realized they could not attack the U.S. using nuclear weapons because of the long distance between the two countries. So they lead a revolt in a neighboring island called Cuba. Then they brought their nuclear missiles within striking distance of the United State. This lead to a showdown called the Cuban Missile Crisis.

So Cuba is aligned with Russia and many communist countries still use its close proximity to the U.S. as a potential staging ground in their war againsr the U.S.

Well, that’s Communism for you!