Cuba goes dark after Hurricane Ian strikes. Can it end the great ‘apagón?’ | Editorial
Total darkness. That’s what fell across Cuba when the island’s antiquated power grid was brushed by powerful Category 3 Hurricane Ian Tuesday night. But what else could be expected? The power grid is a relic from the 1950s and repaired with parts from the long-gone Soviet Union.
The poor Cuban people. Ian exposed the depths of the weakness of Cuba’s grid infrastructure, leaving 11 million people without power when the storm crossed the western end of the country. And we’re not talking about pockets of power outages; we’re talking about no electricity from end to end of the Caribbean island.
Observers watching images of Cuba from a NASA satellite say the country was virtually pitch black at midnight, with only clusters of lights visible at fancy resorts like those in Varadero, which serve only tourists, and at the U.S. Naval Base in Guantanamo.
Unfortunately, Cuba’s communist government likely will piece it back together with its usual spit and glue. By noon Wednesday, pockets of electricity had returned, but the government said that returning power to more densely populated areas would be more complicated, a rare admission of its inability to take care of its people. For now, Havana remains in the dark.
The last thing Cuban people needed was a hurricane. The island is still reeling from the COVID-19 pandemic, which hampered all-important tourism; the economic downturn that followed; the inability of Miami exiles to freely send money to the island because of Western Union’s closing; plus reduced family travel from Miami to the island.
Always ready to spin, Cuba blamed the massive blackout on Ian’s wrath and said the bad weather caused one of the country’s main power plants to fail, which brought down the entire electrical grid. We know Ian is partly to blame, but we also know that the years of neglect is the root of the failure.
Electricity is a political commodity in Cuba. To conserve energy, the communist government schedules power outages to certain neighborhoods. The practice is called apagónes, when millions of Cubans do without electricity in the name of the Cuban revolution.
Recently, apagónes have become common in Puerto Rico, too, and Latin rapper Bad Bunny this month released a song called El Apagón, denouncing the practice, which has grown since Puerto Rico contracted a private company to run its electric system, which has not been the same since Hurricane Maria.
What’s more basic to the quality of life than power?
For the Cuban government, it will become imperative to blame Ian and not its antiquated grid system for the hurricane blackout. Cubans don’t own generators; their only power source is the government. They are trapped with a sole provider.
If this blackout extends for days, it could lead to protests and complaints from the already desperate Cuban people who already do so much with so little.
