A girl cools off in a plastic pool in the street in Havana, Cuba, Tuesday, Aug. 4, 2026.
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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.
