Ap and Afp
La Jornada Newspaper
Saturday, January 31, 2026, p. 2
Havana. Massive power outages in Cuba caused many people to wake up this Friday without knowing that United States President Donald Trump had threatened to impose tariffs on any country that sells or supplies oil to the Caribbean island.
As news spread in Havana and beyond, anger and anguish boiled over over the decision, which will only make life more difficult for Cubans already struggling under U.S. sanctions.
“This is a war,” said Lázaro Alfonso, an 89-year-old retired graphic designer. He described Trump as the “sheriff of the world” and said he feels like he lives in the Old West, where anything goes.
Alfonso, who lived through the severe economic crisis of the 1990s known as the “Special Period” following cuts in Soviet aid, said the current situation in Cuba is worse, given the severity of the blackouts, lack of basic goods and fuel shortages. “The only thing we need… is for the bombs to fall on us,” he said.
The official newspaper Granma indicated that for this Friday’s peak electrical demand, 3,100 megawatts (mw) were required, but the availability of energy is only 1,325 mw, that is, just 42.7 percent of the requirement.
The pressure exerted by Trump worried Cubans who have seen the blackouts of up to 10 hours they suffer in the capital worsen in recent weeks, as well as the difficulties in buying fuel.
The lines at Havana gas stations that sell hydrocarbons in dollars were several blocks long yesterday, Afp confirmed.
University student Jorge Grosso, 23, considered that we have to “negotiate and see what conditions (Trump) has, because in the end they are suffocating us.”
For this third-year accounting student, who stood in line for “almost 24 hours” to buy gasoline, if Trump managed to cut off the country’s oil supply, “what is coming is going to be tough, very tough.”
Cuba has been facing a serious economic crisis for six years, with shortages of all types of products and prolonged blackouts, due to the combined effects of the tightening of US sanctions, in force since 1962, the low productivity of its centralized economy and the collapse of tourism.
In the last five years, Cuba’s gross domestic product (GDP) fell 11 percent and the government faces a severe shortage of foreign currency to guarantee basic social services, in particular the operation of its electrical network, the maintenance of its health system and the supply of subsidized products to the population.
After facing 13 US administrations in a mostly hostile climate, Cuba only experienced rapprochement with Washington during Barack Obama’s second term. That short-lived diplomatic thaw ended after Trump’s first arrival at the White House (2017-2021), who reinforced like none of his predecessors the embargo that Washington has applied against the island since 1962.
