HAVANA: Most Cubans were still without power on Saturday, a day after the latest widespread electric outage to hit the cash-strap­ped Caribbean country.

It was the first widespread blackout of 2025 and the fourth outage over the past six months on this island of 9.7 million inhabitants.

Cuba has been suffering through an economic crisis marked by widespread food and fuel shortages, and it struggles with an aging electric system. The authorities said that parallel circuits were helping provide power to priority sectors like hospitals, and some neighborhoods.

“Several provinces have parallel circuits and generator units are starting to be synchronized” with the national grid, Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel said on X.

The outage started on Friday evening in a suburban Havana substation, ultimately bringing down the national system, the energy ministry said. The streets of Havana were plunged into darkness, forcing people to navigate by phone and flashlight.

Much of the Cuban capital faces near-daily power cuts of four or five hours — outages that can last 20 hours or more in the provinces. In February, the authorities suspended all activity on the island for two days to avoid a widespread blackout. Two outages in the final quarter of 2024 lasted several days, one of them during a hurricane.

“God help us, this country is going from bad to worse,” 82-year-old Havana resident Xiomara Castellanos said.

Published in Dawn, March 16th, 2025