Cuba Daily Life

A man maneuvers his electric tricycle alongside his small dog in Havana, Cuba, Wednesday, July 29, 2026.

Tags

As featured on

As blackouts stretch for days, life in Cuba revolves around small bursts of electricity

As blackouts stretch for days, life in Cuba revolves around small bursts of electricity

Cuba's power blackouts have been stretching sometimes for days, so Cubans are planning their lives around the lights turning back on. Those small gasps of relief may be for just a few minutes or hours — and at any time of the day or night. The crippling blackouts are fueled by an oil blockade imposed by the Trump administration to pressure the adversary government. But the move transformed the lives of average Cubans suffering one of the worst crises the island has had since the Cuban revolution. Daily life has turned into a tangle of compounding crises families have to work to unravel.