The Lights Went Out Again. What Else Is New?

Photo by YAMIL LAGE/AFP via Getty Images.

The lights went out again. That’s not news. That’s just life in Cuba. 

In Holguin and across the rest of the island, blackouts aren’t moments of crisis; they are part of the everyday life of a Cuban citizen. Power outages are so frequent that people no longer check when the electricity returns, but rather only when it goes. There is a kind of heartbreak that arises from watching your country on the brink of collapse, frozen in time, with no hope for things to improve. 

But these outages are only one part of a much larger crisis. Today, Cuba faces a slow and exhausting emergency, shaped by a government that struggles to meet the population’s most basic needs and by outside pressures that make recovery even harder. This crisis reflects the reality of a system that no longer works, and the absence of any clear way out. 

Collapse 

Cuba’s economic collapse is not a temporary downturn; it is the result of long-standing problems shaped by central planning, missed chances at reform, and lost international support. The country has faced years of recession or near-zero growth. In 2024, Cuba’s economy shrank by an additional 1.1 percent to more than 10 percent below pre-pandemic levels. Core sectors including agriculture and energy continue to severely underperform, while productivity remains low and debt remains high. Reforms have been partial at best as the private sector remains constrained and state-run enterprises bloated and inefficient. These are not issues that can be resolved through a one-size-fits-all policy approach; Cuba’s economic structure is shaped by decades of centralized control, geopolitical isolation, and institutional rigidity. Solutions that may work in more open economies have failed. Effective reform requires not only economic recalibration, but political will, administrative capacity, and an institutional framework that does not currently exist. 

The situation has been exacerbated by external factors: the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s triggered a devastating contraction, and more recently, the economic crisis in Venezuela sharply reduced the oil and financial aid that Cuba once depended on. The COVID-19 pandemic further weakened tourism—one of the country’s key sources of income. As of 2025, Cuba faces acute fuel shortages, an unsustainable fiscal deficit, and rising inflation driven by excess money printing. Together, these pressures have left the government unable to guarantee food, energy, or basic public services. This is not just an economic downturn; it is a systemic failure. The state can no longer fulfill even its most basic responsibilities, and everyday life has become centered around scarcity, uncertainty, and survival. Without structural reform and access to external financing, Cuba’s economy is not positioned to recover. And while these conditions are felt most immediately in blackouts and shortages, they are signs of something deeper: a country running out of both options and time.

Scarcity 

What might be considered an extraordinary crisis elsewhere has become the framework of ordinary existence in Cuba. Power cuts stretch for hours—sometimes more than a day, shutting off electricity, water, internet, refrigeration, and the ability to cook. People plan their day around what time they might have light or when the stove may work. Cuba produces only a fraction of the fuel it needs, and what it does have is low quality, damaging the aging power plants that continue breaking down. Emergency fuel deals with Russia, Mexico, and Turkish power ships have not fixed anything. Food and medicine are also difficult to procure. In March 2024, the government began rationing staples such as rice and milk and even turned to the World Food Programme for assistance in securing powdered milk. More often than not, pharmacies will have empty shelves, and when goods can be found, inflation ensures they are inaccessible. These shortages are not just a sign of an economy in trouble; they are a reminder of the difficulties of survival in Cuba. 

However, this kind of deprivation does more than disrupt daily life; it changes how people think, feel, and plan. Families find themselves rationing not merely electricity or food, but also their own energy, patience, and hope. Over time, scarcity shapes how people anticipate their days, teaching them to expect interruption, instability, and loss. Plans become provisional. Joy becomes cautious. Even rest becomes something earned through exhaustion rather than something freely taken. The emotional cost is cumulative: a quiet heaviness that settles into households and becomes part of how life is understood. Within that accumulating heaviness, the limits of state capacity become increasingly visible. And in the long term, this erosion of public provision does not simply encourage outward migration; it constrains the possibilities people believe exist within the country itself.

Departure

Since 2022, more than 850,000 Cuban citizens have arrived in the United States. This wave is not an anomaly; it is the latest expression of a decades-long pattern of departure. From the Mariel boatlift to the Balsero crisis, migration has been a recurring response to national rupture. The departure of the Cuban people is less about a single trigger than it is about the slow erosion of what staying might mean. When scarcity and uncertainty define daily life, and efforts to speak out are met with repression, people begin to leave not out of sudden desperation but in quiet resignation. The state does not collapse all at once; it recedes, gradually. For many, leaving is no longer a dramatic rupture but the only option left. In fiscal year 2022 alone, Cuban nationals were intercepted at the U.S.–Mexico border nearly 225,000 times and interdicted at sea more than 6,000 times, exceeding the numbers seen during the 1980 Mariel boatlift and the 1994 Balsero exodus. Since the Cold War, Cubans have held a unique place in U.S. immigration policy, especially under the Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966, which allowed most arrivals to gain legal residency within a year. Although the repeal of the “wet foot, dry foot” policy in 2017 narrowed these privileges, Cubans continue to benefit from humanitarian parole pathways and reunification programs that highlight the lingering political weight of U.S.–Cuba relations. What emerges now is a national transformation through subtraction: fewer young professionals, fewer children enrolled in schools, fewer futures imagined on the island. This is not a temporary crisis.

Control and Isolation

Despite the weight of both external sanctions and internal breakdown, what ultimately defines the Cuban condition is not just hardship, but control. Cuba’s isolation is not accidental; it is preserved through state policy, censorship, and repression. Internet access is expensive, limited, and closely surveilled, with service blackouts routinely imposed during protests or politically sensitive moments. Independent journalism is criminalized, and dissent is often punished through arbitrary arrests, smear campaigns, and digital harassment. Activists and critics face systemic intimidation, as the government enforces strict limits on freedom of expression and assembly. Even basic survival is mediated through control. Citizens depend on la libreta, a monthly ration booklet distributed by the state, to receive staples like rice, beans, and oil. Acquiring these often means waiting in long lines for hours. Speaking out against this system has led many to exile or imprisonment. There is no room for criticism, only consequences.

In the end, yes, the lights went out again. But what else is new, when darkness has become the only thing the state can still guarantee?"