Raúl Castro’s grandson draws public anger amid blackouts
The Tuesday collapse marked the third time in 10 days that Cuba’s entire grid failed, according to The Guardian. Power was briefly restored Wednesday morning, but blackouts have worsened since. For residents, the nationwide failures blend into rolling local outages that have become a defining feature of daily life on the island.
The grid’s fragility reflects decades of underinvestment made acute by the current crisis. Jorge Piñon, a senior energy researcher at the University of Texas, said the system’s backbone remains its large power plants, which he described as “old, broken and tired.” Cuba’s Minister of Energy, Vicente de la O Levy, said the government faces “a total absence of fuel” and lacks access to spare parts for its thermoelectric units.
The crisis intensified in January when the US military removed Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro from power, cutting off a critical oil supply route for Havana. Washington subsequently imposed an oil blockade as part of a broader pressure campaign to force political change in Cuba. In March, President Donald Trump said of Cuba, “Whether I free it, take it, I think I can do anything I want with it.” MSI previously reported on Trump’s pledge of “imminent” action against Cuba’s government as blackouts deepened the crisis earlier that month.
The blockade has driven foreign companies from the island, including hotel operators, airlines, miners, and shipping firms. An electric car importer told The Guardian that containers were stranded in Kingston and China with no timeline for delivery. A court in Florida in May charged 95-year-old Raúl Castro with murder in connection with the 1996 shooting down of small planes from Miami, opening the possibility of a Venezuela-style extraction effort.
The effect on daily life has been severe. Summer heat has turned electricity into a survival necessity — for water pumps, phone charging, food refrigeration, and sleep. “An hour isn’t enough time to run the pump to get water or to charge phones,” Alberto, a middle-aged man, said during a protest in Havana’s Vedado neighborhood. “People want the government to act right now.”
Where salsa once filled the streets, the drumming of pots and pans has become Cuba’s dominant sound, The Guardian reported.
Even before the blockade, Cuba’s state had weakened under pandemic-era hyperinflation. Crime, once among the lowest in Latin America, is rising with fights on the streets, break-ins, and violent muggings, according to The Guardian. Police, once ubiquitous, are difficult to find, with victims reporting hours-long waits for response.
Prisoners Defenders, a Madrid-based rights group, said the number of political prisoners in Cuba had risen to 1,306, including Héctor Ochoa Vergara, detained after participating in what the group described as a peaceful demonstration against blackouts and water shortages in Ciego de Ávila. Cuba’s most prominent political prisoner, artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, was en route to exile in the US on Saturday after completing a five-year sentence for disorderly conduct, though he was being held in an unknown location while his visa was arranged.
The crisis has coincided with visible disagreements within Cuba’s government. The US has been leaking details of negotiations over political and economic reforms conducted through Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, the 42-year-old grandson of Raúl Castro. Rodríguez Castro gave an interview to USA Today in which reporters were invited to one of his grandfather’s former offices and then to a Havana restaurant. He wore Hermès sneakers and a Rolex and carried documents in a Salvatore Ferragamo bag. “It pains me that many people can’t live the way I do,” he said, adding that he had no interest in politics but that “if at some point the revolution needs me to step up, I will do it.”
The display drew widespread anger. Michel Torres Corona, whose state-television program Con Filo was considered the epitome of Cuban government propaganda, wrote: “To usurp the functions of government, to assume a public role for which no one elected you, to proclaim yourself spokesperson for measures or new directions for the country … would anyone else be allowed to do that?” Julio César Guanche, a respected Cuban academic, described Rodríguez Castro as someone “without recognised institutional public functions.”
Michael Bustamante, chair of Cuban and Cuban American studies at the University of Miami, said the interview may signal a collapse in US-Cuba negotiations rather than progress, calling it “a cry for relevance.” Bustamante said: “I think there’s an open question as to who exactly he speaks for, and whether the channel of communication with him is ongoing or not.”
Washington had been seeking what officials described as a Cuban equivalent of Venezuela’s Delcy Rodríguez, who assumed the presidency after Maduro’s removal and now works closely with the US.
Meanwhile, the Cuban government announced 176 measures to expand the private sector and attract investment, though the steps had not yet been enacted. The US State Department dismissed the measures as “superficial smoke signals.”
On the military front, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush appeared alongside an Iranian Shahed drone at the Biltmore hotel in Coral Gables and linked Cuba to Iran over what he described as reports that Cuba had purchased 300 attack drones. The reports remain unconfirmed. Trump followed up, saying: “We’re not going to allow that to happen.”
Cuba’s government says it has few options amid the crisis. De la O Levy said fuel supplies were exhausted and spare parts inaccessible. The energy minister attributed the fuel shortages to the US blockade, The Guardian reported.