Electricity has been restored to almost 90% of Havana residents four days after a nationwide blackout hit Cuba. Several Cuban provinces were still without power, after the collapse of the nation's largest power plant caused lights to go out across the island on Friday. FRANCE 24's Sharon Gaffney speaks to William LeoGrande, Professor of Government at the American University. He says Cuba never recovered from the impact of Covid and the sanctions imposed by Donald Trump.
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NewsTranscript
00:00This is Apropos.
00:04Electricity has been restored to almost all of the Cuban capital Havana
00:09and some outlying provinces following a fourth major grid failure in half as many days.
00:15The blackout further complicating recovery efforts after the island was hit by strong winds
00:20and heavy rain during a tropical storm.
00:23Authorities say the grid, long near collapse, has reached a critical point
00:27as obsolete infrastructure deteriorates and fuel runs increasingly low,
00:32as Solange Mujan explains.
00:36Swells pounding the coast, winds hitting homes at 120 kilometers per hour.
00:43Oscar, the category one hurricane, was downgraded to a tropical storm
00:47as it made landfall in Cuba.
00:50Oscar, it must be said, is already on Cuban land.
00:53It made landfall near the city of Baracoa on Sunday at around 6pm.
00:58But such weather warnings on television were not able to be transmitted into many homes.
01:03For even before the storm hit, Cuba's been grappling with a nationwide power outage.
01:08It is one of the worst blackouts in years.
01:11On Friday, the power grid failed across the country
01:14when the island's biggest coal-fired power plant suddenly stopped working.
01:18After days without electricity and the sweltering Caribbean heat,
01:22the situation for many Cubans has become untenable.
01:27It's been three days since the electricity has not come on, not even for a moment.
01:31There's no water, there's no food, it's all going rotten.
01:35I feel like crying and screaming. I really don't know what I'm going to do.
01:40Living in the pitch black, as soon as the sun goes down,
01:43many Cubans protested by banging pots and pans.
01:46Authorities said they're doing the best they can to turn the lights back on
01:50but they're calling an energy emergency.
01:53When there is a power outage, one feels powerless.
01:56Without electricity, there is no water, no production of medicine, no food collection.
02:02Electricity is essential and it affects everything.
02:05It creates an annoyance. It's an annoyance for all.
02:10The outage and tropical storm Oscar come as Cuba is in the midst of its worst economic crisis
02:16since the fall of the Soviet Union.
02:18Soaring inflation and a lack of basic goods are commonplace.
02:21And embargoes from the US mean that acquiring fuel and nearby help are all the more difficult.
02:28To discuss the crisis in Cuba, we're joined now by specialist in Latin American politics,
02:34William Leo Grant. He's professor of government at the American University in Washington DC.
02:40Thank you so much for being with us on the programme this evening.
02:43Firstly, people in Cuba, they've endured months of blackouts at this point.
02:48You describe the current situation as unprecedented.
02:51It's the country's longest ever blackout.
02:53Why exactly is this happening now?
02:57Well, I think you've hit upon the two main reasons in your introduction.
03:01The equipment is 20, 30 years out of date and it just breaks down constantly.
03:08And the government doesn't have the resources to update, to modernise it.
03:13The second big problem is that the government doesn't have the money to import sufficient fuel
03:19to power the thermoelectric plants that keep things running.
03:23So even when they've got the equipment working, sometimes they have to have planned blackouts
03:28that shut down parts of the island because they just don't have the functional capacity
03:34to service all the demand.
03:36And this comes as people also suffering from dire shortages of food and fuel.
03:43You yourself have many colleagues living in Cuba.
03:46What is their view on what should be done?
03:52Well, the problem of the government not having the money to import the fuel
03:56extends to the government not having enough money to import the basic food, medicine that people need.
04:05This all goes back to two external shocks that hit the Cuban economy in 2019-2020.
04:13The severe sanctions imposed on Cuba by President Donald Trump
04:18and then the Covid pandemic which shut down the Cuban tourist industry,
04:22which is really the heart of the domestic economy, shut it down for two full years.
04:26And it hasn't recovered even to this day.
04:29So what kind of assistance do you think the US needs to offer now?
04:33Is it time to lift the embargo?
04:36Well, I think the embargo has been counterproductive for a long, long time.
04:40But in this moment of crisis, I think it makes good sense for the United States
04:45and serves the interests of the United States to relax some of these sanctions
04:49and provide humanitarian assistance to Cuba in the form of food and medicine
04:54and particularly some equipment and technical expertise to stabilize the electrical grid.
05:00Because when power goes out to 10 million people, this does not serve anybody's interest.
05:05And what exactly is the embargo aimed at doing?
05:09As you've referred to there, for more than 60 years it's failed to either overthrow the Cuban regime
05:15or foster any real kind of positive change.
05:19Well, I think the embargo is in place partly as a result of policy inertia, frankly.
05:25It's been around for such a long time it would take a real presidential initiative to get rid of it.
05:31President Obama tried to do that, but he ran out of time before his end of his term in office.
05:38The people who support the embargo still see it as a way to force the collapse of the Cuban government.
05:46I think one of the things we've seen in the last few years as things have gotten harder and harder in Cuba
05:53is that collapsing the government will cause more problems for the United States than anything.
05:58A million people have left Cuba as migrants just in the last year
06:02and 800,000 of them have come to the United States.
06:06And that has really exacerbated our migration problems on our southern border.
06:12William, would you have expected President Biden to have done more on making progress
06:17when it comes to normalising ties with Cuba, given what Obama did when he was in office?
06:25I think many people expected that President Biden would carry on the policy
06:30that President Obama adopted at the end of his administration.
06:34He promised to do as much when he was campaigning in 2020.
06:41But when he finally came to office, he really did very little.
06:45He left most of Trump's sanctions in place.
06:49He, in just the last year or two, has relaxed a few of them.
06:54But the Trump policy is still strangling the Cuban economy
06:59and really crippling it and preventing it from recovering.
07:04And how are people feeling there about another potential Trump presidency?
07:07We are just, of course, two weeks from the election in the United States.
07:11What kind of impact do you think a possible Trump presidency would have?
07:17Well, I think there's every indication that a second Trump administration
07:21would go back to the policies of the first Trump administration,
07:26roll back the few relaxations that President Biden has adopted
07:31and just turn the screws even tighter,
07:34hoping that it can finally bring down the Cuban government.
07:39And what do you make of what the Cuban government itself says about the US?
07:43It seems to be blaming entirely the United States for both the embargo,
07:48for sanctions, saying that they are solely to blame
07:51for the kind of shortages that we're seeing in Cuba.
07:54Well, you can't blame the United States entirely for the problems in Cuba.
07:59There are really three things that have contributed to the crisis
08:03that Cuba is in today.
08:05One is the economic problems of Cuba itself,
08:09trying to make a transition from a centrally planned economy
08:12that it had during the Soviet period
08:14to more of a market-style socialism similar to Vietnam or China.
08:20That transition has been slow, it's been halting
08:23and it hasn't really been very effective yet.
08:26So the Cuban economy had real structural problems
08:29when it was hit by Trump's sanctions and then the COVID pandemic.
08:33It's those three things together that really account
08:35for the terrible situation that Cuba faces today.
08:38And we mentioned the US election a little earlier.
08:41Cuba, it's been used as a means of criticism
08:43in American presidential elections,
08:46either to criticize on one side opponents
08:48for being soft on communism, weak on foreign policy
08:52or to appeal to Cuban-American voters.
08:55Is it featuring at all in this year's election?
08:58We have had, of course, a major focus on immigration.
09:03No, interestingly, the policy towards Cuba
09:05has not been a focus in this presidential election.
09:09Part of the reason, I think, is that Florida is no longer considered
09:13one of the swing states that will decide the election.
09:16Over the last several election cycles,
09:19Florida has become more and more solidly Republican.
09:23And so if you're watching the US campaign,
09:26you'll notice that neither of the candidates
09:29is spending very much time in Florida.
09:31They're in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia and Arizona.
09:35Focusing really on the seven swing states currently.
09:38Of course, it's not just the US, as you say, William.
09:41The Cuban allies, Russia, Mexico, Venezuela,
09:44they've all slashed exports to the island in recent months.
09:47What kind of an impact is that having?
09:51The Cubans can't pay their bills to anyone,
09:53not to Mexico, not to Russia, not to China.
09:56Now, some of Cuba's closest friends, Mexico, for example,
10:00has been willing to extend credits to Cuba
10:03and Mexico is sending them some oil
10:05to try to relieve the shortages that they're facing.
10:09But even their close allies have really been urging them
10:12to get their own internal economic policies right
10:16in order to begin to rebuild the economy.
10:19And China, for example, has not been willing
10:23to extend large amounts of aid or investment
10:26because they don't believe that the Cuban economy
10:29is yet on a solid path of recovery.
10:32William, we'll have to leave it there for now,
10:34but thank you so much for your time on the programme.
10:36That is William Leo Grant, Professor of Government
10:39at the American University in Washington, D.C.
10:42My pleasure.
10:44Well, that is it from us for now.