By Dave Sherwood and Ayose Naranjo
HAVANA, July 6 (Reuters) – Cuba began to slowly restore power on Monday after the country’s national electric grid collapsed earlier in the day, the latest blow to an island already suffering from severe energy, fuel and medicine shortages.
Grid operator UNE said it was providing electricity to some vital services, including hospitals and food production centers, but by late afternoon was able to serve only 1% of the capital Havana’s demand.
Officials have not yet said what caused the grid to collapse.
Cuba has for months suffered from hours-long and, more recently, days-long power outages linked in part to a decrepit grid and a U.S.-imposed oil blockade that has cut off the island’s fuel supply.
The nationwide outage and slow recovery are more bad news for Cubans already exhausted from rolling blackouts that make it impossible for many to work or sleep in the Caribbean summer heat.
“Look at my face, it says it all,” said Ariel Sotelo, a bleary-eyed 57-year-old Havana resident who had been without electricity since the day before. “We just have to grin and bear it, but it’s not easy.”
Nearly two-thirds of the country was already without power when the grid collapsed on Monday, so many of the island’s residents, largely without communications and accustomed to the lack of electricity, hardly registered the difference.
A television newscast encouraged the lucky few with access to electricity to spread the word about the collapse of the nation’s grid to friends and neighbors without.
Monday’s nationwide blackout is the eighth since October 2025, and the third this year.
The administration of U.S. President Donald Trump cut off fuel shipments from Venezuela to Cuba earlier this year and also pressured Mexico to halt shipments, and has threatened to slap tariffs on any nation delivering oil to the island nation.
The U.S. has called Cuba’s government a national security threat and says such sanctions are necessary to force a change in the island’s government, a long-time aim of U.S. policy toward Cuba.
Cuba, 90 miles (145 km) off the shores of the Florida Keys, has long maintained it is not a threat to the United States.
For most Cubans, however, the issue is more practical than political.
“The heat, the mosquitoes, it’s just unbearable,” said Omar Ortega, 60, of Havana. “How long is this going to go on? Honestly, we can’t take it anymore.”
(Reporting by Dave Sherwood and Ayose Naranjo in Havana; Editing by Kylie Madry and Bill Berkrot)
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