TL;DR
Cuba's national power grid has collapsed three times this month, and the Caribbean joins Africa and the Pacific in the war's peripheral damage zone.
MSM Perspective
Politico reported Cuba's third grid collapse as infrastructure decay; NPR connected it to the U.S. oil blockade and sanctions enforcement.
X Perspective
X is framing Cuba's blackouts as a direct consequence of the U.S. oil blockade tightening during wartime, calling it economic warfare on two fronts.
Cuba's national power grid collapsed for the third time this month on March 22, leaving most of the island's 11 million residents without electricity. The collapse lasted approximately 18 hours before partial power was restored. The March 16 blackout lasted 29 hours. The March 4 event lasted 14. Each collapse is longer than the last, and the intervals between them are shrinking. [1] [2]
The proximate cause is infrastructure failure. Cuba's power plants are decades old, under-maintained, and operating far beyond their designed capacity. But the accelerating cause is fuel. Cuba depends on imported oil to run its generators, and the U.S. oil blockade, which has intercepted Venezuelan tankers bound for Cuba since January, has reduced deliveries to a fraction of what the grid requires. NPR reported on March 16 that the blockade has "drastically eroded" Cuba's ability to maintain base-load generation. [2] [3]
The war in Iran compounded the crisis. Global oil prices rose more than 30 percent in March, making the spot-market purchases that Cuba relies on for supplemental fuel substantially more expensive. Cuba's foreign currency reserves, already depleted by sanctions and the pandemic, cannot absorb the price shock. The island is caught between a blockade that restricts supply and a war that raises the cost of what little supply gets through. [3] [4]
Cuba's blackouts place the Caribbean in the same category as sub-Saharan Africa and the Pacific: regions experiencing energy crises driven by a war they had no part in starting. The Philippines declared an energy emergency this week. Zambia's president ordered emergency fuel procurement. Mauritius announced conservation measures. Cuba's grid collapses are the most visible version of a pattern playing out across the developing world. [1] [4]
Al Jazeera reported that Cuban hospitals have shifted to generator power during blackouts, but generator fuel is subject to the same supply constraints as the grid. The hospital in Santiago de Cuba reported two emergency deaths during the March 16 blackout when ventilators lost power during the transition to backup generators. [1]
-- LUCIA VEGA, Sao Paulo
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