The entire island of Cuba suffered an electrical blackout that began late Friday morning and went into the night due to the failure of one of the few energy plants that were still working, amid what the government a few hours before called an “energy emergency.”

The outage at 11 a.m. at the Antonio Guiteras power plant in the western province of Matanzas left the entire country without electricity, the Ministry of Energy and Mines announced on X.

Cuban leader Miguel Díaz-Canel said his government has given “absolute priority” to solving “this highly sensitive energy contingency for the nation.”

On Friday afternoon the Ministry of Energy reported that one plant powered by natural gas in Jaruco, a town in the western province of Mayabeque, was already functioning. The ministry said it plans to use some generators to try to restart larger power plants.

A ministry official said there were plans to send fuel to power stations aboard ships near key energy plants in Havana and Santiago de Cuba. However, the official, Lázaro Guerra Hernández, said the process of restarting electrical service in the country was in an “initial stage” and could not be rushed.

The crisis went from bad to worse in a matter of hours.

In the past few days, Cuba’s state-run electricity company has reported problems that left it generating just half of what the country needs, leading to blackouts that have lasted as long as 20 hours a day in some provinces. Most of the island’s power plants are over 50 years old, and the government says it doesn’t have money to provide regular maintenance or modernize them.

Late Thursday evening, Cuban Prime Minister Manuel Marrero said on a national TV broadcast that the country’s economy is mostly paralyzed due to the lack of oil and the capacity to generate electricity.

“We have to say with all transparency that we had to paralyze all fundamental entities of the economy to provide a minimum of electricity to the population,” Marrero said. “The situation we have been facing has been getting worse in the last few days,” he said, adding that “the lack of fuel is what is having the most influence on this.”

The prime minister said the government has “prioritized” providing electricity to residential areas.

Marrero said all state enterprises and industries must shut down production unless they provide “vital” services. It is unclear how long these measures will remain in place.

Edrey Rocha González, the head of the Cuban state oil company, said the situation became critical when one fuel oil shipment could not be offlloaded and distributed to power plants on time earlier this month because of bad weather.

He said the government would start distributing fuel oil to power plants around the country on Friday and that diesel fuel would be used in smaller generators to alleviate the problem during peak demand hours.

Marrero cited a government plan to improve the capacity to generate electricity but provided few details. He said the government is focusing on “reducing” energy consumption and is studying increasing the price of electricity for the private sector.

On Thursday evening, the Ministry of Education announced the suspension of all classes in schools and universities around the country until Sunday, citing “climate conditions.” But a Cuban state television host said the suspension was due to “the energy situation.”

Marrero’s televised appearance was delayed until late in the evening because of technical difficulties that caused Cubans to joke on social media that the Cuban government was not even good at giving bad news.

Still, most comments on Cuban state websites and social media accounts reflected a deep sense of frustration and a lack of trust in the government’s ability to fix the situation. Several called for the island’s top leaders to resign, despite several laws that punish criticism of the government on social media.

“Please, this will not have a solution as long as the incompetents who are currently in charge of the government of this country continue to lead,” wrote a Cuban living in Varadero in a comment left on the Facebook account of the official news outlet Cubadebate.

On Friday afternoon, a woman in the Regla neighborhood outside Havana who spoke to the Miami Herald said residents in the area have spent two months without cooking gas, so they have been trying to cook with electricity amid the blackouts. She said her power was cut off around 11 a.m., the time of the reported grid failure.

The woman, who asked not to be named, said the situation on the island has deteriorated amid food shortages, problems with the water supply, rampant garbage and disease. Despite the chaos, she said, her neighbors remain calm. “People continue to put up with the abuse,” she said.

She also said rumors were circulating of a possible police mobilization to protect key places such as banks.

Since Thursday evening, a document from the prime minister’s office has been circulating on WhatsApp in Cuba. Among the measures the document calls for is the “activation of Defense Zones” — local military structures that were last mobilized during the islandwide anti-government protests in 2021.

The U.S. Embassy in Havana advised U.S. citizens on the island or who are planning to travel to Cuba to take precautions in the aftermath of the blackout. “There is no information on when power will be restored,” the Embassy said in a Facebook publication. It also suggested Americans in Cuba monitor local media, “conserve water and food,” and review “personal security plans.”

‘Cuba is bankrupt’

In Miami, Cuban economists who gathered Friday for the yearly conference of the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy at Florida International University painted a dire picture of Cuba’s “structural crisis” and the country’s possible economic collapse, in the absence of subsidies that the island previously received from the former Soviet Union or later from Venezuela.

Several presentations listed Cuba’s current problems, including the need to import almost all food, astronomical trade deficits and foreign debt, failed monetary policies that have led to the creation of multiple currencies and skyrocketing inflation that has left most of the population living in poverty.

“The Cuban economy is bankrupt,” said Omar Everleny Pérez, a Cuban economist living on the island. “However, the Cuban authorities do not clearly address the inadequacies of the centralized planned economy model.”

Pérez lamented that the government has been restricting the private sector, when it was supposed to be implementing promised reforms to expand the market. He said the private sector was responsible for 44% of all goods and services consumed in the country in 2023.

Mauricio de Miranda Parrondo, a Cuban economist with the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in Colombia, said the economy was near collapse and it could no longer be reformed.

“The issue now is the lack of democracy,” he said, “and the solution is to dismiss the government.”

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(El Nuevo Herald staffer Maykel González contributed to this story.)

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