Scattered protests erupt in Havana amid Cuba's nationwide blackout crisis

Residents banged pots, honked horns and shouted “turn on the lights” across Havana as crews struggled to revive power after Cuba’s latest nationwide grid collapse. The unrest in the capital on July 7 followed an outage a day earlier that left millions without electricity and pushed the island deeper into a crisis already marked by shortages of fuel, medicine and basic supplies.

Most of the country had been reconnected to the national system, but it could still supply only a fraction of demand. In Havana, the strain was sharper. By late afternoon, UNE was serving only 1 percent of the capital’s demand, even after authorities restored 131 distribution circuits and reconnected 396,447 customers, about 46 percent of the city.

Eleven of the island’s 16 thermoelectric generating units were offline because of breakdowns or emergency maintenance at plants more than 40 years old, and the country was producing only about one-third of what it needed. The blackout was Cuba’s third nationwide outage of 2026, after an earlier national collapse in March, and Santiago de Cuba, the island’s second-largest city, remained disconnected.

Energy minister Vicente de la O Levy said protocols were activated quickly to restore electricity, and hospitals and food-production centers were being prioritized. Still, residents in Havana’s outlying neighborhoods of Jaimanitas and Santa Fe spent the night on doorsteps and sidewalks, and Amauri Gonzalez said there was no quick fix because the plants were obsolete and there was no fuel.

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Michael Waltz blamed the Cuban government during a debate on sanctions, while Cuban officials and the United Nations called U.S. sanctions a violation of international law and said they harmed residents. Washington cut off Cuba’s fuel supply in January and then imposed fresh sanctions.