Aswering this from a longtime CNN correspondent in Havana
In Sagua de Tánamo, my hometown municipality in Holguín, they had gone 33 hours without electricity by midday today. That is the norm, and it affects the countless days when people there have no water. I have an 84-year-old uncle who is carrying water from the Sagua River — a highly dangerous activity for him.
The problem is determining who we assign responsibility to for this state of affairs. It is not enough to simply say the situation is unbearable. It has been for a long time. We need to take clear positions in the face of such a depleted and abandoned scenario.
The Cuban government, of course, bears its share of the blame. I believe the long-term management of the electricity issue was deficient. We could be in a much better position today if the authorities had applied more responsible foresight in planning for the sector.
However, we cannot lose sight of the fact that the sense of urgency that has characterized life in this country since the 1990s offers a plausible explanation for the short-termism — and even for the naive and mistaken hope in a Democratic continuity, or in Trump's manageability, in 2016.
I mention 2016 because the spotlight was only placed intensely on Cuba after Donald Trump announced the violent seizure of Nicolás Maduro. Yet this crisis dates back to the first coercive measures announced at the Manuel Artime Theater on June 16, 2017.
It stems from the extraordinary escalation in 2019, with the infamous pairing of Mauricio Claver-Carone and John Bolton — representing the West Wing — along with Marco Rubio and Díaz-Balart from Congress. It comes from the absurd decision to redesignate Cuba as a State Sponsor of Terrorism (SSOT).
It comes from the full application of that inherited policy by the Biden administration, which in this regard was no less cruel. Instead, it remained expectant, hoping that Lester Mallory's hour would arrive after 60 years. Pay attention to this.
I am particularly interested in emphasizing how negative the Biden administration was toward Cuba. While it is true that it introduced few or no aggressive measures of its own, it never stopped betting on the implosion of the Island. Therefore, its four years weigh very heavily as well.
And on top of all that, there is everything that has happened since the seizure of the Skipper up to now. So, there is surely much to point out regarding internal management, but I am crystal clear that my 84-year-old uncle is not carrying water from the Sagua River because of that. It is not because of that.
My university — the one Trump keeps falsely repeating is the largest Russian SIGINT installation — does not today lack scholarship students because of an internal management problem. I do not believe that the bus stops in Havana are literally abandoned due to bad management.
We must finally understand what it means to be — and to govern, to be fair — under the most exhaustive sanctions regime in the entire world. And, as I always emphasize, it is not just that it is the most exhaustive, but how exhaustive it is. It may sound the same, but it is not.
In other words, if we stay at the comparative level, the concrete value of its damage potential is not made explicit. Even in comparative terms, we must very carefully measure the distance between the sanctions regime applied to Cuba and the second place, whatever that may be. Do the task.
If Javier Milei were not the bootlicker that he is — to say the least — with respect to the United States, and to Trump in particular, where would the Argentine economy be today with all its Austrian orthodoxy? No ruler is willing to experiment in a laboratory with what Cuba has on top of it.
Here we arrive at the artificial dilemma that Trump has imposed on a government that is, yes, I repeat, plagued by bad management and lack of proactivity — in an integral sense — but which has the duty to uphold the principle that Cuba cannot be a pupil of the United States.
And that second part is good, even if sovereignty does not fill stomachs or get measured in megawatts. The U.S. administration holds us hostage and blackmails and pressures us with our suffering. It is this iniquitous administration that asphyxiates us under the false premise that it is striking the "regime."
The target is always the people. That line about "we cannot give oxygen to the dictatorship" has always been an implicit recognition that while there may be bad management here — and more than that, corruption — the people will definitely breathe much better in a Cuba without sanctions.
And so the incentive to protest, to bang pots and pans, is lost. With fewer blackouts, daily bread from the ration store, "mandados" (errands/shopping), and in general a State more participatory in the market, the Cuban forgets that there is a "regime" to overthrow, and that cannot be allowed. They must suffer.
This macabre political experiment that the United States is carrying out, this lack of peace that strikes Cubans every day, has already cost lives, and for many it will cost them years of life at the very least. The direct culprits are on Pennsylvania Avenue — do not look for them elsewhere.
Now, I truly find the Cuban government's lack of responses to this situation highly irresponsible. We must move toward somewhere, toward some cardinal point. The direction must be decided by the authorities, and it must be now. Every day, something must be transformed.
The Cuban who is going more than 30 hours without power, who has gone days without water, without bread, is the direct responsibility — first and last — of the country's political leadership. And, beyond denunciation and resistance, they must present them with a path toward the light, and at least try to build it.
