Cuba: Blackouts, Hunger, and an Economy That Pays No One

Cuba goes dark: total blackouts and hunger without rationing

How long can a country survive without electricity, food on shelves, and anyone lending a hand? The answer in Cuba is uncomfortably long. The island’s power grid has completely collapsed, with all thermal plants offline and aviation warnings issued for airports, according to on-the-ground reports. The dictatorship admits what it denied for years: the money is taken by a few.

The daily scene is not a disaster report. It is the normal life of a country falling apart. In many central Havana streets, people walk in the road because sidewalks are dangerous: balconies crumble and houses literally collapse. Beach water looks clean but is contaminated: no functioning sewers or treatment plants. Garbage trucks do not move, and landfills receive nothing. On the brink of epidemics, with protesters shot and the world’s silence as the soundtrack.

Why does Cuba live on international begging?

The economic diagnosis is devastating and admits few interpretations. Cuba produces nothing relevant, and what little it produces interests no one. Its real economy rests on three legs that are not production: remittances from emigrants, tourism, and renting resources to foreign companies. With these three sources, only a fraction of GDP is covered, and the trade balance is a chronic disaster.

The underlying problem, according to the harshest analyses, is that Cuba pays no one. It survives on international begging and pleading, on aid from abroad and from those who left. This dependence explains why the country cannot start: without credit, investment, and trust, there is no way to rebuild a productive apparatus dismantled over decades.

The result is measured in stomachs. The UN sets the poverty threshold at $1.30 a day. In Cuba, according to available data, they do not even reach half that. A retiree earns between $3 and $4 a month. The ration book, that symbol of the model, no longer exists: state stores have been empty for over three years.

Blackouts, crime, and a night recalling 17th-century Rome

The power grid is the most visible symptom of the collapse. Cuts last for hours every day and no longer spare Havana, which for years lived oblivious to the perpetual blackouts in the interior. A country without energy is a dead country, and crime proliferates as the light goes out. With darkness, street danger grows: walking at night in the capital requires an acompañante or a good dose of luck.

Cubans, with that humor for the tragic that characterizes them, have renamed the phenomenon. They do not have blackouts, they say, they have "alumbrones": those few hours a week when the current returns. Irony is the only currency that does not devalue.

Can Cuba be compared to Haiti or Eastern Europe?

Opinions here are divided. Some who have been to Haiti several times maintain that, being Africa in the Caribbean, it is still better than Cuba. Others look to Eastern Europe and allow moderate optimism: countries that suffered the same recovered in fifteen years and now some threaten to surpass Spain. The difference, they point out, is that there the system fell, and here it has not.

The comparison with Ukraine also appears, though in a different sense: some argue that Cubans are better off than Ukrainians. The data, stated thus, is startling. But it measures different things: it is not the same a country at war as a country at peace dying of hunger and abandonment.

Why is there no revolution in Cuba?

The question runs through the entire conversation. The most repeated answer is also the oldest: revolutions only succeed where foreign weapons enter to support. Discontented Cubans are not receiving any armament from anyone, and without that, no uprising is possible. The first thing the revolutionary government did after overthrowing Batista was to disarm the population. With desire but no weapons, nothing is done.

Some add a cultural factor: the Cuban idolizes much, does little, and speculates too much. They always seek a messiah to solve the problem. The island, they recall, did not fight its independence to the end; it was given to them by the Americans, nor has it fought for its democracy. In its twelve years of free history, it does not reach eight of democracy. Always dictators, revolutions, and tutored governments.

Against this thesis, another current defends the opposite: one thing is the people, another individuals. In Cuba, as anywhere, there are exceptional people. And if you are one of those and you happen to be born there, you either thrive on the side of the oppressors or you are dignified and you leave. Making a revolution alone is useless self-immolation. That is why fleeing is not cowardice: it is the only reasonable exit for those who do not want to be complicit.

Tourism that does not compensate the bleeding

The comparison with Spain appears in the migratory analysis. A German who raises apartment prices in Mallorca does not leave the tourist zones and, above all, spends in Spain the pension paid by the German state. Tourism means the transfer of foreign money inward: positive balance. Immigration using tourist visas in fraud of the law works in reverse: it transfers Spanish money outward. Negative balance. The distinction, applied to Cuba, explains why the country cannot lift its head even with visitors.

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The initial question was how long a country can survive without light, food, and credit. The answer, given the data, is that it survives as long as someone from outside pays the bill. The day remittances, tourists, and aid stop arriving, the experiment will finally show how long it truly lasted.