Cuba Restores Power After Another Nationwide Blackout
Is Cuba's grid collapse the wreckage of decades of failed central planning or the intended result of a U.S. oil blockade?
Above: Cars drive along a road with traffic lights out during a power outage in Havana on Sept. 18. Image credit: Adalberto Roque/AFP/Getty Images
The Spin
Establishment-critical narrative
The U.S. oil blockade in January turned rolling outages into total grid collapse, and the cruelty is the point. Cutting fuel to an entire island means hospitals running on hope, spoiled food, sleepless nights and rising infant deaths among people who never threatened anyone. Starving 10 million civilians to force a government to fall is economic warfare.
Pro-establishment narrative
Blaming Washington for Cuba's dark nights lets the real culprits off the hook. Decades of central planning left the island with crumbling plants, deferred maintenance and an energy model that never worked without a foreign patron writing the checks. When a single transmission line can black out an entire nation, the system itself fails.