Cubans will remember it as the day everything stopped working. Around mid-morning on Oct. 18, the entire country’s power grid crashed. Refrigerators stopped working, traffic lights went out, gas station pumps became unusable, phones could not be charged, and schools, stores, and factories closed. It took days of frantic cleaning and repairs for the system to sputter sporadically back to life.
This was a nationwide collapse without precedent in the modern world. It is the result of choices made by two governments, in Havana and Washington.
Cubans are eager to replace their fossilized dictatorship with a more open system. Instead, President Miguel Diaz-Canel and his Central Committee cling to the repressive regime that Fidel Castro imposed after his revolutionary victory in 1959.
For 30 years after the revolution, the country did relatively well even though it was following centralized economic policies that have failed in every country where they have been tried. Lavish aid from the Soviet Union allowed Castro to give poor Cubans better education, health care, and living standards than their counterparts in most nearby countries.
Cuba’s economic crisis began with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Then, after a period of extreme hardship during the 1990s, Cubans found a new benefactor: Hugo Chávez, the fiery leftist who ruled Venezuela from 1999 until his death in 2013. Venezuela has rich oil deposits, and Chávez sent plentiful supplies to his Cuban friends. Since his death, however, Venezuela has spiraled into its own crisis and is unable to support its own population, let alone help others.
Cuba’s power grid is a microcosm of the country’s decay. Like the Diaz-Canel government, the grid is stuck in the past. Power plants are ancient. There is no money for spare parts. Technicians have emigrated. The grid collapse was as inevitable as it was astonishing.
Many in Washington may shrug or even cheer at news that seven decades of American sanctions have helped turn Cuba into a nation of sufferers. Over the last several years, though, Cubans have reacted to their suffering by fleeing the country at unprecedented rates.
According to one study, a mind-boggling 18 percent of Cuba’s population left the country in 2022 and 2023. That translates to more than 1.5 million people. Hundreds of thousands have scraped together cash for flights to Nicaragua and from there begun long and dangerous treks toward Texas.
US sanctions on Cuba may make some politicians feel good because we detest the regime there. The sanctions also, however, directly contribute to the migration crisis that plagues the United States.
Only a decade ago, Cuba seemed promising. President Barack Obama normalized diplomatic relations, encouraged business ties, authorized scheduled air service, and even visited Havana. His policies produced an explosion of mini-capitalism. Small businesses sprouted. People tidied up spare rooms to accommodate tourists. Restaurants and cafes opened. Houses were painted, people were better dressed, and optimism abounded.
That ended when Donald Trump took office in 2017. Pushed by his militantly anti-Cuba supporters in Florida, he ended most scheduled air flights, forbade American cruise ships to dock in Cuba, and canceled Obama’s policy of economic engagement. The results were predictable: economic depression followed by massive migration.
American sanctions on Venezuela make it nearly impossible for Cuba to receive what little oil Venezuela has available. Restrictions on agricultural exports deprive Cubans of food and American farmers of a potentially lucrative export market. Limits on cash transfers from the United States and on the ability of Cuban entrepreneurs to import American goods hurt small businesses on the island.
Some expected President Biden to swing the pendulum back toward partnership, but instead he has maintained Trump’s policy of isolating Cuba. He has also begun enforcing a fiendishly effective sanction that has devastated Cuba’s tourist industry, a major employer and earner of foreign exchange.
Nine days before Trump left office in 2021, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo placed Cuba on the State Department’s list of countries that support terrorism. There is no shred of evidence that Cuba supports, sponsors, or engages in terror, but Pompeo justified the designation by saying Cuba was “granting safe haven to terrorists.” Biden has used this bogus designation to deal Cuba a heavy blow. Under rules he is enforcing, any tourist who visits a country on the terror list — like Cuba — is disqualified from the “visa waiver” program that allows people from more than 40 countries to enter the United States without applying for a visa. That is a great inconvenience, and as a result, many sun-seekers now bypass Cuba. Tourism is down 16 percent from last year.
Some might cheer Cuba’s descent into darkness because they imagine it could set off an uprising. Violently overthrowing tyrannical regimes, however, rarely leads to democracy and freedom, as shown by experience in countries from Iran and Libya to Guatemala and Nicaragua. Chaos in Cuba could turn that country into a maelstrom of crime, terror, and drug trafficking.
Biden may have remained hostile to Cuba for a political reason: fear of alienating Cuban-American voters in Florida. That fear should evaporate after the forthcoming election. Biden’s lame-duck months would be an ideal time for him to lead the United States and Cuba back toward cooperation. That would ease the refugee crisis on our southern border. It might even turn the lights back on.
Stephen Kinzer is a senior fellow at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University.
