Cuba suffered another blackout last Friday that impacted the entire island. This is believed to be the seventh major blackout since January.
The Ministry of Energy and Mines announced the islandwide power outage on its official X account and added that officials had begun "activating service-restoration protocols."
"No one can stand these constant blackouts. There isn't enough food, there's no water, there's no electricity — you have no idea," Mercedes Rodriguez, a 60-year-old worker in Havana, told The Associated Press as she waited for public transportation to return home. "The country is in such a sad state, and there are no words for what we're going through."...
Even when the national power grid is working, Cubans regularly endure outages lasting more than 30 consecutive hours.
Something else Cuba is running out of is cash. Banks can't operate when the power is off so hours are irregular at this point. Even when they are open, the banks usually run out of cash early in the morning. People line up early to take out what they can.
Víctor Rodríguez, a 72-year-old retiree, rose before dawn to nab his spot in line at a bank in Havana several kilometers from his home.
If he'd risked a later start, the bank might have run out of bills before his turn. Or the power or internet could go out, shutting the branch down. Arriving at 7.30 in the morning, he hoped he would be done before the heat of midday.
Around him, dozens of others, many also elderly, had made a similar bet — arriving early and hoping for their chance to take out the maximum daily allowance of 20,000 pesos, or about $28 at the black market exchange rate.
The value of the peso has dropped dramatically over the past five years in Cuba. It currently sits at about 1/10th the value it held in 2021. Inflation is officially running around 25 percent but Professor Steve Hanke calculates the actual rate as more than double that.
#CubaWatch🇨🇺: Today, I measure Cuba’s inflation at a PUNISHING 64.0%/yr.
— Steve Hanke (@steve_hanke) September 22, 2026
THAT’S THE 5TH HIGHEST RATE IN THE WORLD.
Cuba's inflation is one of the most unreported stories in the world. The mainstream media REMAINS OUT TO LUNCH. pic.twitter.com/bxGPq1spDL
It's always a bad sign when the government starts printing larger bills. This same thing happened in Venezuela a few years ago.
Last week, the government released new bills, in 10,000- and 20,000-peso denominations, which officials said they hope will improve cash supply. Cuba also authorized last week the first private currency-exchange house, an unprecedented move in a country where the central bank has long controlled the exchange rate...
Midiala Hon Mesa, a 56-year-old Havana resident on a shopping trip late last week, said local farm markets maintain abundant supply, but prices can jump drastically from one day to the next while wages remain stagnant.
Today, President Trump spoke at the United Nations and had some pointed words for Cuba. The entire Cuban delegation walked out as he predicted their government "will fall."
Cuban leaders walk out of the UN General Assembly as President Trump calls them an "absolutely failed state" that "will fall."
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) September 22, 2026
"My administration is also seeking a fundamental change in the situation in Cuba, where the communist regime is under great pressure. The biggest… pic.twitter.com/vVhCS2Gxn4
All of the guys walking out of the meeting are going to go get a nice lunch and are generally having a fine time here in the U.S. But back home the Cuban people have nothing so long as the Castro regime clings to power. And of course they are fine with that, just like the Iranian theocracy is fine with it. The communist authoritarians of the world have a real advantage in never having to face the voters.
Meanwhile, a group of Cuban ex-pats are making plans for what comes next from a location in Miami.
At a sprawling waterfront mansion facing Biscayne Bay, a group of wealthy Cuban-Americans has spent months hatching detailed plans for a country that doesn’t yet exist.
“We have waited for 67 years,” Juan Omar Sixto, 82, a former tobacco farmer who heads the newly formed Cuban-American National Chamber of Commerce, told the group on a balmy evening in June as they met close to a pool ringed by faux-marble statues of seminude Roman nymphs. “We need to start.”
The group has been drawing up blueprints for a Cuban stock exchange and an investment summit in Havana. Elsewhere in Miami, prominent Cuban-Americans are mapping out a provisional government, recruiting engineers to study floating power stations, and strategizing on repairs to the island’s crumbling infrastructure. They have plans to reach out to blue-chip companies, banks and investment funds to invest in a new postcommunist Cuba.
Cuba really could be an island paradise with an endless supply of money from U.S. and European tourists. All it needs to do is let go of the communism. And that's the pitch the ex-pats are making to Trump.
Politically connected Cuban-Americans see an ally in Trump. Many believe the former real-estate tycoon largely sees Cuba as a distressed asset: a sun-soaked island of underdeveloped beaches and decaying properties that could be opened to American investment in a way that leaves it economically dependent on the U.S. They have sought to engage those instincts, pitching Cuba’s future to Trump not only as a political cause and part of his legacy, but also as a vast reconstruction project.
A lot of Cuban Americans believe it's now or never.
“I don’t think we’ve ever been as close,” says Bryan Calvo about the end of communist rule in Cuba. The 28-year-old mayor of Hialeah leads the most Cuban-American city in the country and a deep-red stronghold that renamed its main thoroughfare Donald J. Trump Avenue. “But at the same point, if it doesn’t happen now, it’s never gonna happen,” he says.
President Trump has repeatedly promised to deal with Cuba once he's done dealing with Iran. Right now, Iran's stubbornness is the only thing saving Cuba from becoming Venezuela. But Iran can't hold out forever and neither can Cuba. At least that's the hope.
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