Sat, Mar 21, 2026 page7

• Trump threatens Cuba as island’s power crisis deepens

  Nationwide blackouts and strains on daily life could force major economic reforms in Havana

  • By Ruaridh Nicoll / The Guardian, Havana
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  Just a few hours after a nationwide electricity blackout struck Cuba, US President Donald Trump hinted at an even darker future for the island’s rulers.

  The country’s entire electricity system had collapsed on Monday afternoon, leaving about 10 million people without power. Emergency teams were still struggling to restore it when the US leader made his latest threat.

  “I believe I will have the honor of taking Cuba,” he said to reporters, adding, “I mean, whether I free it, take it — I think I could do anything I want.” The high-handed tone of the remarks shocked Cubans on the island and abroad.

  

  Illustration: Kevin Sheu

  “Over the early decades of the 1900s, US ambassadors believed the US had the right to steer Cuban political life,” said Ada Ferrer, a historian whose Cuban memoir Keeper of My Kin is soon to be published. Such involvement was once known as “coercive influence,” Ferrer added.

  “No politician has spoken as crudely about it as Trump just did, and no one has used that kind of explicit language in almost a century,” she said. “Trump says aloud the things for which historians used to have to uncover evidence,” she added.

  Many on the island were struggling with more immediate concerns: spoiled food, stifling heat, sleepless children. Others were appalled, nonetheless.

  Gretel, a musician and mother in the Havana suburb of La Lisa, had struggled through the night trying to ward off mosquitoes from biting her children. Late last year, nearly a third of the population was infected during an outbreak of the mosquito-borne illness chikungunya, which causes brutal joint pain that can last for months.

  On Tuesday morning, Gretel was still without power and fuming at the US president’s comments. “It is the same tone as he is using with Iran, with Venezuela. Surprisingly, Americans do not see what it is. It is like that scene in The Great Dictator where Charlie Chaplin’s dancing around saying, ‘I can do this, I can do that, I can do anything,’” she said.

  After the success of the mission to abduct former Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro, one of Cuba’s greatest allies in the region, Trump has steadily ratcheted up the pressure on the territory, signing an executive order to impose tariffs on any country that sends oil to the Caribbean island.

  The result has been disastrous for ordinary Cubans. There are few cars on the roads, most of the airlines serving the island have suspended flights, the Canadian company Sherritt International has shuttered nickel mining operations, state offices have closed, and schools have partly suspended classes.

  The lack of fuel has also exacerbated the rolling blackouts. Cuba’s archaic power network has been partially collapsing regularly since October 2024, and the country has already seen three national collapses in the past four months, with a knock-on effect on the water supply. This weekend, the power cuts sparked a rare violent protest.

  By lunchtime on Tuesday, the country’s grid operator said power had been restored to the west and center of the 1,250km-long island, with about 30 percent of Havana’s homes reconnected.

  “It must be done gradually to avoid setbacks,” said Lazaro Guerra, the electricity director of the Ministry of Energy and Mines, adding, “Because systems, when very weak, are more susceptible to failure.”

  That may be what the US administration is counting on.

  Cuba recently admitted it had been in discussions with Washington, and it now seems to be showing a willingness to make some economic changes in an attempt to appease the US.

  Shortly before Trump’s announcement, Cuban Deputy Prime Minister Oscar Perez-Oliva Fraga, a member of the Castro family, said Cuba was open to expatriate Cubans and foreign companies doing business on the island.

  “Cuba is open to having a fluid commercial relationship with US companies and also with Cubans residing in the United States and their descendants,” he told NBC. “We are not just talking about small enterprise, but also the possibility of being able to participate in key sectors of our development.”

  This led to a waspish reply from John S. Kavulich, the president of the often sympathetic US-Cuba Trade and Economic Council, suggesting Cuba’s authorities had long been dragging their heels when it came to overhauls. “The government of the Republic of Cuba is only now authorizing what could have been implemented four years ago. They refused,” Kavulich said.

  On Tuesday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the proposed economic changes did not go far enough — and hinted at further US pressure to shatter Havana’s 67-year-old political system.

  “What they announced yesterday is not dramatic enough. It’s not going to fix it. So we’ve got some big decisions to make,” Rubio said. The New York Times reported on Monday that US negotiators were demanding the resignation of the Cuban president, Miguel Diaz-Canel.

  The comments from Washington suggest Trump’s patience is running out, and Cubans were wondering if this time the state would manage to get the system up and running again.
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