Cuba

When Cuba’s national grid collapses, as it did for the third time in 10 days on Tuesday, a collective groan spreads across its cities and people wonder, again, whether the island’s antiquated electricity system may soon become unrecoverable.

The 777-mile Caribbean island of 9.5 million people has been sweltering under a six-month-long oil blockade imposed by the US, part of a pressure campaign to bring down its communist government. But the parlous state of Cuba’s infrastructure goes far further back.

“The backbone of the system is still the big power plants,’ said Jorge Piñon, a senior energy researcher at the University of Texas. “And they’re old, broken and tired.”

Every time I write one of these “Cuba Falling” articles, I feel like I need to end the “Cuba Falling” part with a question mark. I’m getting frustrated with the lack of movement, and I can’t help but wonder if we’re spread a little too thin with Iran. It’s time to finish that job and quit playing around with those animals. Cuba is becoming an even bigger hellhole than it already was. The people are starving. They have no power. It’s also clear at this point that the regime is a threat to our national security. It apparently has high-capability Iranian and/or Russian drones, and it is colluding with everyone on the radical left, from Democrat members of Congress to Code Pink, and I’d call all of that a very serious problem for the United States.

I was just reading an essay on social media in which a Cuban woman calls the island nation a “concentration camp,” and she has a point. The humanitarian situation there is worse than it has ever been. Earlier this week, the country experienced yet another nationwide blackout. Food and potable water are becoming more and more scarce, as is medical care. Hundreds of political prisoners remain in detention centers. Donald Trump and Marco Rubio are ready to fix these results of systematic oppression — that has lasted nearly seven decades — but the regime refuses to allow it. Instead, it does a lot of blaming and chest thumping, and promises major reforms in name only.

Cuba on Monday suffered its third nationwide power outage since the start of the year, the state electricity company said.

The impoverished island was already struggling to keep the lights on before the US president, Donald Trump, imposed an oil blockade in January, which has depleted the already dwindling supply of fuel for Cuba’s power plants.

“There has been a total disconnection from the national electricity generation system,” the UNE power utility wrote on X, adding that it was investigating the causes.

US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth issued a warning to Cuba during a visit to the US military base at Guantanamo Bay on Wednesday.

“It would be unwise of the government of Cuba ​to try to procure or get access to the types of ⁠weapons ​that could reach this ​base or the American homeland,” Hegseth said, ​without offering details on such weaponry.

“They would be inviting the kind of confrontation ​not only ⁠do they not want but they could ⁠not stand,” he said, claiming that “no ​country on Earth can match the capabilities of the United States of America.”

Trump has said that he can “take Cuba anytime.” But if he expects a walkover like Venezuela, he should think again. While Cuba’s proximity to the U.S. and collapsed economy should make it an easier target, its totalitarian system better resembles that of Iran, whose resistance to U.S. military and economic pressures may be inspiring Cuba’s besieged communists to do the same and possibly coordinate their moves with the IRGC.

The doctor called from the darkness, a shadowy figure sitting on the stoop of his apartment building. “I want to tell you we’ve been four days without light,” he said. “And without electricity, water is also a problem. And there are mosquitoes everywhere.”

From the buildings around came a cacophony, as beyond dark windows people smashed pots against pans. It was a cacerolazo, a traditional form of protest which has now become commonplace in Cuba amid seemingly endless rolling blackouts.

There are a lot of stories about Cuba floating around right now. Some are MSM outlets acting like they have a scoop on something that’s been happening or rumored to be happening for months. Some are simply absurd and probably not true. Most aren’t actually verified by the Donald Trump administration and come from anonymous sources. I’m not even going to bother with those today. I saw this happen in the final months before we captured Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela. Most of these reporters and media outlets didn’t even care about these countries until they became newsworthy, and once they do become hot topics, they’ll publish just about anything to get clicks. I can’t do that.

You know they’re in desperate times when the Cuban regime starts sending its mouthy representatives to do interviews on Fox News of all places, hoping to reshape the narrative.

The country’s foreign minister, Bruno Rodríguez — and arguably the regime’s slickest mouthpiece — did just that earlier this week, and he went straight after his favorite punching bag: our dear Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

On paper, we have all sorts of sanctions on enemy nations like Cuba, North Korea or Iran, in practice there’s a revolving door of influencers, celebrities and media types who prop them up. The Cuba situation is especially egregious with half of Hollywood having sat down to chats with Castro and the current mayor of LA, among many other elected officials and activists, having gone to Cuba with Marxist front groups.

On a street called “Perseverance” in the heart of central Havana, patience has run out. Its warren of homes, crammed behind the façades of once-grand mansions, have been without electricity for all but a few hours of the past two weeks. Most of its residents have moved from the stifling indoors to the marginally cooler pavement outside. There, they are letting their frustration rip.

“Come on Trump, just send the ships and end this shit,” said one, a rake-thin man who gave his name as Rafael. His neighbours appeared taken aback by such open dissidence, but none bothered to argue with him. “We want a deal with Trump. No war,” said a woman called Odalys, as she fed her baby.

Cuba poses a “national security threat” to the US and the likelihood of a peaceful agreement is “not high”, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said.

His comments come just a day after the US charged Cuba’s former president Raúl Castro with murder over the 1996 downing of two planes resulting in the killing of US nationals.

Rubio said Washington’s preference was “a diplomatic solution” but warned that President Donald Trump had the right and obligation to protect his country against any threat.

The fatal crash of two planes off the coast of Florida more than 30 years ago is at the heart of the criminal charges against Cuba’s former leader Raúl Castro the US revealed on Wednesday.

The attack by the Cuban military on a civilian plane sparked one of the biggest crises between Cuba and the US, with effects lasting to this day.

Cuban fighter jets shot down the two small planes – which belonged to a group of Cuban exiles in Miami – in the waterway between the Caribbean island nation and the US state of Florida, with all four on board killed instantly.

The United States has issued a federal criminal indictment against Raúl Castro, Cuba’s former president, on Wednesday, and five others in a significant escalation of the Trump administration’s campaign to oust the country’s six-decades-old communist regime.

The 94-year-old political figurehead was charged in Miami, Florida, with conspiracy to kill US nationals, four counts of murder and two counts of destruction of aircraft, according to court filings obtained by CBS.

Other defendants are a fighter pilot who was initially charged in connection with a 1996 incident in which four men were killed by the Cuban military when their aircraft were shot down during a humanitarian mission in the Florida Straits.

Cuba has denied purchasing more than 300 military drones and plotting to attack the US base at Guantánamo Bay.

Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla, the country’s foreign affairs minister, described a report that Havana had acquired an arsenal of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) as “fraudulent”, adding that it was being used as a pretext to justify American “military aggression”.