Cuba Struggles Amid Hurricanes, Sanctions, and Blackouts

Cubans chat at night on a street during a nationwide blackout on October 18, 2024, in Havana. 

"To say that Cuba has had a trying week would be an understatement. After a grid failure last Friday caused four days of nationwide blackouts and a Category One hurricane smashed into the eastern province of Guantanamo on Monday, killing seven, the lights are back on most of the time and things have steadied on the island. Nilza Valdés Núñez, sixty-one, from Guanabacoa, East Havana, feels a bit of a relief. I spoke to her on Monday, the day after her eighty-one-year-old mother cooked all the defrosting meat in their freezer that her brother in Florida had bought for them. ... At a time when over a million Cuban homes are already going without running water, the power cuts compounded the problem by disabling pumps. People carried water to their houses in buckets from nearby cisterns and wells. ..."



A street is lit by car lights during the third night of a nationwide blackout in Havana, Cuba on October 20, 2024.

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