Since Friday October 18, 2024, Cuba’s national energy grid has collapsed three times, causing countrywide blackouts. While power has been restored on and off again, many communities have been without electricity for more than 72 hours. The whole island – over 10 million people – is suffering the consequences, as classes and non-essential business activity have been suspended and Hurricane Oscar—the third storm to hit in as many weeks—makes landfall in eastern Cuba.
The lack of electricity has had severe impacts – and in some cases produced total stoppages – in the provision of vital services like water, gas, transportation, trash collection, healthcare, education and Internet, among others. After days of blackouts precipitated by fuel shortages, increased demand and inadequate infrastructure, Cubans’ limited supply of food has also begun to spoil, compounding their challenges and impacting the most vulnerable: seniors, children and the sick.
The current situation reveals the extent of Cuba’s grueling economic and humanitarian crisis, which, on the one hand, is the result of incomplete and incoherent government reforms, and on the other, the undeniable outcome of harsh, extraterritorial U.S. sanctions and over six decades of a comprehensive trade embargo.
ACERE notes that fuel shortages and a lack of spare parts to maintain and repair thermoelectric plants — the main drivers of the current energy crisis — are direct consequences of U.S. maximum pressure policies enacted by the Trump administration and continued to a large extent by the Biden administration. Costing the island hundreds of millions of dollars a year, the inclusion of Cuba in the list of state sponsors of terrorism (SST) has not only stifled imports, but complicated international financial transactions and the contracting of cargo ships to obtain the fuel, spare parts, technology and equipment that the energy system demands. The SST designation, along with dozens of other sanctions Trump levied on investment, trade and travel, has had an immeasurable impact on the Cuban economy, affecting both the public and private sectors and especially harming the Cuban people, who continue to leave the island in droves.
The Biden administration should show its genuine concern for Cubans on the island by initiating a review for rescission of Cuba’s SST designation today. With sufficient political will, President Biden can call for the review to begin and take Cuba off the list before he leaves office. This action would reverse a decision by former President Trump that was widely understood to be politically motivated, without merit and contrary to U.S. counterterrorism efforts and national security interests.
President Biden still has 90 days in office, and can use this time to make amends and do the right thing by implementing an action his administration claimed to have started, but later walked back on, purportedly due to political pressure from Congressional hardliners whose failed policies continue to yield counterproductive results.
Amid such a desperate situation, ACERE notes that there have been no reports of major protests in Cuba as a result of the mass outages. The Biden administration must not passively wait for the Cuban people to rise up against the government, nor use the latter’s repression of legitimate dissent as a pretext to continue to inflict undue harm on the entire Cuban population.
With over 10 million neighbors suffering each day from hardship and a lack of hope, the Biden administration can show compassion towards the Cuban people by understanding that the human rights of Cubans ought to come before the prospect of regime collapse. It is squarely within the U.S. national interest to do everything it can to prevent the deepening of a major humanitarian crisis in a country like Cuba, just 90 miles south of U.S. borders, regardless of political or ideological differences.
