After twenty-four hours without electricity, Havana resident Frank Lorenzo saw the lights return. An hour later, Cuba’s entire grid collapsed. So much for relief.
That brief interval of light offers a fitting image of the socialist promise: Relief arrives just long enough to remind people of what they are missing. Then the darkness returns.
On September 18, 2026, failures in high-voltage transmission lines triggered another nationwide blackout, according to Cuban authorities. The American embassy’s subsequent warning said the cause remained under investigation and that the estimated restoration time was unknown, Ciber Cuba reported.1
A day later, service was gradually returning, but only about 48 percent of Havana’s customers had their electricity restored. A country cannot live on restoration protocols. Families need emergency service, functioning refrigerators, running water and the ability to prepare food.
The Failure Begins Before the Blackout
Electricity is only the most recent dramatic failure. Long before this latest collapse, ordinary necessities were becoming extraordinary demands.
In August 2025, CNN documented dwindling supplies of subsidized rice, cooking oil and milk, along with shortages of sugar and beans.2 Economist Omar Everleny Pérez Villanueva said his neighborhood had gone eight months without its monthly chicken distribution. A ration book is a poor substitute for a meal.
The streets delivered yet another verdict: Garbage piled so thickly that one Havana street was blocked to traffic, not because collectors were striking but because collections were too infrequent. This was not about luxuries. It was a fundamental task of removing rotting refuse from the streets.
Road maintenance offered little reassurance: In May 2025, figures attributed to Cuba’s National Roads Center showed that only 29 percent of the road network was in good condition (if that much).3 The revolutionary road to prosperity apparently requires motorists to navigate around its promises.
The Embargo Does Not Absolve the Regime
American restrictions do affect third-country dealings, and the imposed oil blockade has sharply worsened blackouts. However, a transmission-line failure is the immediate trigger of this collapse; it does not prove that fuel shortages and sanctions are irrelevant to the socialist central planning system.
Acknowledging external pressure does not give the regime a free pass. Nor does an embargo mean that no American food or medical supplies reach Cuba.
The U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council recorded approximately $490 million in U.S. agricultural and food exports to Cuba in 2025. Its June 2026 report also recorded $309,492 in healthcare product exports.4 These figures represent actual shipments, not merely theoretical exemptions.
American rules generally permit approved sales or donations of medicines and medical devices and provide authorization routes for agricultural exports, though conditions remain.5 The honest argument is not that sanctions impose no costs.6 Rather, sanctions cannot explain away socialism’s inherent failure caused by a lack of morals.
A System That Punishes Free Enterprise
Consider what happens to the person expected to produce the food in a socialist paradise. In a 2024 report, farmer Armando Zamora described compulsory sales to state companies at state-set prices: 38 pesos per liter of milk, compared with 100 pesos on the black market.7
“Without incentives, there will be no greater production,” he warned. Here is the practical indictment of socialism: officials set the price while someone else bears the labor, expense and risk.
Investment priorities tell a similar story: CNN reported years of inadequate grid maintenance and investment, even as the government continued to foolishly invest millions in hotels despite first-quarter 2025 occupancy of just 24 percent.8 That contrast demands scrutiny of decisions made in Havana, not merely denunciations of Washington.
Cuba’s American Admirers
Yet Cuba still has American admirers. A program description for New York City Democratic Socialists of America’s (DSA’s) radio show praises Cuban socialists for “remarkable achievements in education and healthcare.”9
This is not merely sympathy for Cubans. The DSA’s statement situates its Cuba solidarity work within “our broader mission to support the growth of democratic socialism in the U.S. and abroad.”10
That is not just a pledge to replicate every Cuban institution. It is an explicit link between defending Cuba and advancing the same socialism in America. Americans should ask why a movement selling an economic future treats this record as an advertisement rather than a warning.
Private property, honest exchange and responsible stewardship are safeguards against making every household dependent on the state’s incompetence. An authority that claims responsibility for everything cannot disclaim responsibility whenever basic services stop working.
Compassion for Cubans requires denouncing the tyrannical system under which they suffer. It requires acknowledging that concentrating power in the state’s hands is not the same as creating abundance through private initiative, an initiative that can reap the fruits of its labor as well as pay the price for its failure.
Before America’s socialists advertise Cuba’s paradise in the U.S., they might ask Cuba’s tyrants to demonstrate a modest achievement. Keep the refrigerator running and the lights on.
Photo Credit: © Mediteraneo– stock.adobe.com
Footnotes
- https://en.cibercuba.com/noticias/2026-09-19-u1-e208574-s27061-nid340672-embajada-eeuu-cuba-emite-alerta-apagon-general
- https://www.cnn.com/2025/08/22/americas/cuba-crisis-energy-economy-intl-latam
- https://oncubanews.com/cuba/solo-el-29-de-las-carreteras-de-cuba-se-encuentra-en-buen-estado/
- https://www.cubatrade.org/blog/2026/2/26/z2vs62vv9s0tsd0zirow1nuf17vm3g
- https://2001-2009.state.gov/p/wha/rls/fs/2001/fsjulydec/2612.htm
- https://www.bis.gov/licensing/country-guidance/cuba-export-controls
- https://translatingcuba.com/whoever-sets-prices-in-cuba-has-never-gotten-up-at-two-in-the-morning-to-milk-a-cow/
- https://www.cnn.com/2025/08/22/americas/cuba-crisis-energy-economy-intl-latam
- https://feed.dsausa.org/en/page103/index.html
- https://www.dsausa.org/statements/statement-on-cuba/