On March 16, Cuba’s national electricity grid collapsed for the third time in four months, plunging 10 million people into more than 29 hours of darkness. Hospitals struggled to keep generators running, water pumps shut down and refuse piled up on streets where collection trucks have sat empty for weeks.
The immediate cause is a fuel shortage building since January, when the United States cut off Cuba’s oil supply following the kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela.
