Cuba Experiences Second Nationwide Power Outage in One Week

Cuba went dark twice in one week, and neither Havana nor Washington wants to explain why that matters.

The second nationwide blackout hit in late October 2024, following a collapse that had already knocked out power to the entire island days earlier. According to Reuters, the Antonio Guiteras thermoelectric plant — Cuba's largest — failed under load, triggering a cascade that left roughly 10 million people without electricity. Reuters and the Associated Press both confirmed the grid went to zero twice within the same seven-day window, something with no precedent in the island's recorded electrical history.

Here is what the sourcing actually shows: this is not cleanly a sanctions story, and it is not cleanly a mismanagement story. It is both, and both governments benefit from pretending otherwise. The US State Department has pointed to Cuban Communist Party mismanagement as the proximate cause — which is accurate. The Cuban government has blamed the US embargo for blocking fuel and parts imports — which is also partially accurate. The EIA reported Cuba's installed generation capacity has declined roughly 30 percent since 2019 due to aging Soviet-era infrastructure and inability to procure replacement components. Neither government is lying. Both are suppressing the part of the story that implicates them.

What is not confirmed: the number of people arrested or injured during protests that broke out during the October blackout period. Human rights organization Prisoners Defenders, based in Madrid, reported detentions occurring during the darkness, but ground-verified casualty figures from independent observers inside Cuba do not exist in the open record. That absence is itself a data point.

What to watch: whether fuel oil deliveries from Russia or Venezuela resume before the next collapse. Bloomberg reported in September 2024 that both suppliers had reduced shipments below minimum operational thresholds. If no delivery occurs within 30 days, a third nationwide outage is not a hypothesis — it is a scheduling question. Watch also for any State Department licensing changes on humanitarian energy exports, which would signal Washington quietly acknowledging its own share of the problem.