The United States Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, stated this Monday that the blackouts affecting Cuba are not related to Washington's policies, but are a direct consequence of the incompetence of the Cuban regime and the neglect of its electrical infrastructure over the decades.
"These blackouts that are happening have nothing to do with us. They were experiencing blackouts last year. They have them because they have equipment from the 1950s in their electrical grid that they have never maintained or modernized because they are incompetent. That is why they have blackouts," Rubio stated in a video published through the official account of the State Department, a snippet from an interview given to Al Jazeera.
The statements come at a time of extreme energy tension on the island, where the electric generation deficit exceeded 2,000 MW in March, with only 1,015 MW available against a demand of 3,050 MW.
So far in March, Cuba has experienced at least three total collapses of the national electric power system, including one on March 16 that lasted for 29 hours and 29 minutes, and another on March 22.
The power cuts affect up to 64% of the national territory, with blackouts lasting between twenty and thirty hours daily in some areas, according to data from the regime itself.
Satellite images from NASA and Bloomberg document a 50% decrease in nighttime lighting on the island, while electricity production fell by 13.7% in 2025 and the Cuban GDP has experienced a contraction of 23% since 2019.
The Cuban thermoelectric system was mostly built in the 1950s and 1960s and has never been comprehensively modernized, a reality that the Minister of Energy and Mines, Vicente de la O Levy, acknowledged by admitting that 2025 was a very difficult and tense year and that 2026 would also face challenges.
Rubio's statements on Monday are part of a stance maintained throughout the month. Last Friday, in Paris after a G7 meeting, the Secretary of State labeled the regime as "incompetent communists" and asserted that the economy of Cuba needs to change and cannot change unless its system of government changes.
The Cuban Chancellor Bruno Rodríguez responded on Saturday accusing the U.S. government of "shamelessly lying" and blaming the embargo, particularly the Executive Order signed by Trump on January 29, 2026, for the energy crisis.
Rubio's statements are striking given their immediate context: on the same day he made them, President Donald Trump announced the lifting of the oil embargo he had imposed in January, allowing the entry of the Russian tanker Anatoly Kolodkin with between 700,000 and 730,000 barrels of crude oil.
However, experts from the University of Texas estimate that this shipment would only last for about ten to fifteen days of supply on the island.
The UN launched this week an emergency humanitarian plan of 94.1 million dollars due to the risk of "loss of life" from the Cuban energy crisis, while Trump summed up the situation with a blunt phrase: "Cuba is finished. They have a bad regime", very poor and corrupt leadership.
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