HAVANA- Reggaeton was playing loudly in a neighborhood bar in Old Havana one recent night, when, suddenly, the music stopped and everything went dark.
Customers complained. Another blackout.
A US blockade on oil shipments to Cuba has plunged the island into its worst energy crisis in modern history. The country's already weakened economy is now teetering on the brink of collapse, with vehicles idling for lack of gasoline, hospitals forced to cancel surgeries and millions of people living without a constant supply of electricity and water.
It is the result of a calculated pressure campaign by President Trump, whose administration is negotiating with Cuba's leaders over the future of the communist-ruled Caribbean island.
People fed up with the rolling blackouts have held sporadic protests in recent days, banging pots and shouting anti-government slogans, rare demonstrations in a country known for repressing dissent.
Some power outages affected isolated areas, but in recent weeks Cuba has experienced three island-wide blackouts. The most recent occurred Saturday night and continued into Sunday.
Two men sell food from a cart in front of a Havana hotel on Friday night.
As Havana and Washington discuss a possible agreement – likely to include some form of economic opening and perhaps limited changes in Cuba's leadership – many people here say they feel like pawns in a geopolitical game beyond their control.
Some, like those at the bar, who continued drinking in the dark after the power went out, say they have no choice but to adapt to a life in which flushing the toilet, cooking a pot of rice or riding the bus to work is now considered a luxury.
“The United States is trying to punish the Cuban government,” said a customer named Rolando. “But it's the people who suffer.”
Cuba's struggles long predate the oil embargo. For years, Cubans have complained about food shortages, deteriorating public services and political repression. Demographers say Cuba is experiencing one of the world's fastest demographic declines (a 25% drop in just four years) as birth rates fall and emigration soars.
Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel blames “genocidal” economic, financial and trade restrictions imposed by the United States in the decades since Fidel Castro's army overthrew US-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959.
1. Young people play dominoes in the streets of Old Havana. 2. A woman reacts to her granddaughter in a bar in Old Havana. (Natalia Favre/for The Times)
But many Cubans blame their own leaders for mismanaging the economy and straying from the ideals of Castro's revolution. They were raised to believe in an implicit social contract, which held that while Cubans might not have luxuries or be allowed full civil liberties, they would always have free education and healthcare, a place to sleep, and enough to eat.
“The pact has failed,” said Juan Carlos Albizu-Campos Espiñeira, an economist at the Christian Center for Reflection and Dialogue in Havana.
He blames the government for soaring inflation and a misguided investment strategy that pumped money into the tourism industry while neglecting critical sectors such as manufacturing and healthcare.
“This is the worst moment in the history of Cuba,” he said. “But things were really bad before this.”
The Vedado neighborhood in Havana.
Life has long been challenging for Pablo Barrueto, 63, who works mornings at a construction site and now spends his afternoons filling plastic jugs from a faucet on the street and lugging them up narrow stairs to neighbors who have been without water for weeks.
His two jobs barely cover food for him and his partner, Maribel Estrada, 55, who earns five dollars a month as a security guard at a state museum.
The couple, who live in a cramped studio in a ruined colonial-era building, can't afford butter or mayonnaise, so breakfast consists of a simple piece of bread. Barrueto said he often goes to bed hungry. He hasn't tried pork or beef in years.
“I work very hard,” said Barrueto, who on a recent afternoon was cooking beans in a tattered pair of jeans. “But I don't see the fruits of my labor.”
Pablo Barrueto, center, fills water containers from a public tap after more than 17 days without running water.
Estrada has developed leg ulcers, but the doctor who prescribed antibiotics said he couldn't find them on the empty shelves of state pharmacies. On the black market, the drug was selling for more than Estrada earns in a month.
“If I lived in another country, my legs wouldn't look like this,” he said, pulling up his pants to show the chronic sores on his calves.
Estrada said he was reaching a point where he would accept anything that would improve his life, even American intervention.
“If things don't get better, they should just hand the country over to Trump,” he said.
The United States has long played an important role in Cuban history, from its involvement in the island's war of independence from Spain to the heavy hand of American companies in the Cuban sugar industry. Washington repeatedly backed unpopular leaders who protected American interests, including Batista, whose corrupt and repressive regime generated support for the Cuban Revolution.
For decades, American critics around the world celebrated the island as a crude symbol of anti-imperialism and a utopian experiment in socialism. But in recent years, amid a government crackdown on dissent, some of that support has faded.
A man holds his ration book and cash as he waits to pick up his daily bread in Havana.
The Trump administration's new bellicose push to dominate Latin America with tariffs and military intervention has spooked allies who in the past might have come to Cuba's rescue.
Mexico, Brazil and Colombia, all led by leftists, have refused to provide emergency fuel shipments in recent months for fear of angering Trump.
The current crisis began on January 3, when the United States launched a surprise attack on Venezuela, killing 32 Cuban security guards stationed there (in addition to dozens of Venezuelan troops and civilians) and capturing President Nicolás Maduro.
When the United States took control of Venezuela's oil industry, the impacts immediately shook Cuba, which had long relied on subsidized oil shipments from the Maduro regime.
Cuba's leaders say the country has not received a single shipment of fuel in three months, weakening an economy that depends on oil to generate electricity.
There is little relief in sight.
An employee of a private grocery store sells vegetables and other products to a customer on Friday in Havana.
A Russian state oil tanker loaded with 750,000 barrels of crude oil is currently crossing the Atlantic. It is unclear whether the United States will try to prevent the ship from reaching Cuba, where the oil, once refined, could provide power to Havana for several weeks.
At the same time, the “Our America” humanitarian convoy is in the process of delivering more than 20 tons of critical supplies to Cuba, some of which will arrive by ship in the coming days.
David Adler, general coordinator of Progressive International, a global leftist group that helped organize the flotilla, said he hoped the delivery of medicine, food, baby formula and solar panels would highlight the severity of Trump's restrictions on Cuba.
“We are beginning to grasp the fact that there will be mothers, children, the elderly and the sick who will die simply as a result of this cruel, criminal and senseless policy,” Adler said. “Why are we inflicting such cruel punishment on a country that poses no threat to the United States?”
In Cuba, where many fear the prospect of losing electricity come summer, with its sweltering heat and swarms of disease-carrying mosquitoes, people are getting creative. With virtually no public transportation and few drivers able to find (or afford) gas that costs more than five dollars a gallon, many people have returned to riding bikes. Others have converted electric scooters into slow-moving taxis.
Young people talk on the street in the center of Havana.
A man in the small town of Aguacate made headlines after modifying his 1980 Fiat Polski to run on charcoal, the same fuel many people here cook with now.
Camila Hernández, who works at the Havana airport, was hoping to celebrate her 21st birthday at home with friends, eating and dancing. “It would have been wonderful,” he said.
But weeks had passed without regular electricity in the house she shares with her parents and boyfriend. His family's home had electricity, but no water.
To avoid spending another night sitting in the dark, she celebrated her birthday by strolling along the Paseo del Prado, an iconic boulevard not far from the seafront cooled by a light sea breeze.
Her boyfriend's mother, Yusmary Salas, 47, said the poor living conditions were testing her patience. “I can't even go to the bathroom without planning how I'm going to flush the toilet,” he said. He said he is hungry for change, but has no idea what form it will take.
Trump insists he “can do whatever he wants” in Cuba, and recently said he hopes to have the “honor” of “taking Cuba in some way.”
Pablo Barrueto carries a container of water to his home in Old Havana.
These types of comments disturb many here who grew up in a country where government buildings still bear the revolutionary motto: “Homeland or death, we will prevail.”
Salas said he hopes that what comes next will be peaceful and that Cubans, who have long been a proud people, will regain their dignity. And their power was also restored.
In the darkened bar in Old Havana, workers hurried to light candles and pour beer that, without refrigeration, would soon warm up. Someone with a battery-powered speaker pressed play on one song, Daddy Yankee's 2004 hit “Gasolina.”
“Give me more gas!“, they sang together. “Give me more gas!”
