Cuba’s aging electrical grid collapsed Monday, leaving the island nation of some 11 million people without power amid a U.S. oil blockade. Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel last week blamed the U.S. embargo for Cuba’s economic problems, saying no oil shipments had arrived for three months. But in a national broadcast, he acknowledged for the first time that his government was in talks with the Trump administration to “identify the bilateral problems that need a solution.” President Donald Trump on Monday told reporters he believed he would have “the honor of taking Cuba.”
Who said what
“I think Cuba sees the end,” Trump said at the White House. “Taking Cuba in some form, yeah, taking Cuba — I mean, whether I free it, take it, I think I can do anything I want with it.” The Trump administration’s opening demand in negotiations is Díaz-Canel’s ouster, The New York Times said, citing four people familiar with the talks. That would “topple a key figurehead while keeping in place the repressive Communist government,” giving Trump a “symbolic win” he can sell to the American people and “Cuban exile community,” though the lack of regime change would “likely disappoint many conservative Cuban exiles.”
Cubans “have grown accustomed to power outages,” Reuters said, but the current crisis “sparked a rare violent protest” over the weekend. The oil blockade has crushed tourism, fueled unaffordable gas prices, forced hospitals to ration care and left garbage piling up in the streets.
What next?
Cuban Deputy Prime Minister Oscar Pérez-Oliva Fraga told NBC News in a clip broadcast Monday morning that Havana was “open to having a fluid commercial relationship with U.S. companies, also with Cubans residing in the United States and their descendants.” Government officials “had planned to announce the economic changes on an evening television program” but did not, the Times said, possibly as a “result of power outages.”
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Rafi Schwartz has worked as a politics writer at The Week since 2022, where he covers elections, Congress and the White House. He was previously a contributing writer with Mic focusing largely on politics, a senior writer with Splinter News, a staff writer for Fusion's news lab, and the managing editor of Heeb Magazine, a Jewish life and culture publication. Rafi's work has appeared in Rolling Stone, GOOD and The Forward, among others.
