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Cuba Begins Restoring Power After New Nationwide Blackout

Are U.S. sanctions to blame for the blackout crisis in Cuba or decades of socialist mismanagement?
Cuba Begins Restoring Power After New Nationwide Blackout
Above: A street vendor in Havana uses a portable lamp to sell goods during blackout on July 6. Image credit: Adalberto Roque/AFP/Getty Images

The Spin


Establishment-critical narrative

Cuba's power grid is being strangled. The six-decade-long U.S. embargo on the island and the recent tightening under Trump have cut off fuel and spare parts, turning basic upkeep into sabotage-by-policy. This is manufactured collapse: a deliberate squeeze on public health, food and daily life, while Cuban workers fight against an economic war designed to break them.

Pro-establishment narrative

Cuba's grid has been dying for decades due to socialist mismanagement, not U.S. sanctions. Soviet subsidies built a bloated, centralized system with no market logic; when Moscow's money vanished, Havana borrowed the same crutch from a new patron — Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro's Venezuela — instead of fixing inefficiencies in its energy system.


Metaculus Prediction


© 2026 Improve the News Foundation. All rights reserved.Version 7.4.1

© 2026 Improve the News Foundation.

All rights reserved.

Version 7.4.1