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00:00This is Apropos.
00:04Electricity has been restored to almost all of the Cuban capital Havana
00:09and some outlying provinces following a fourth major grid failure in half as many days.
00:15The blackout further complicating recovery efforts after the island was hit by strong winds
00:20and heavy rain during a tropical storm.
00:23Authorities say the grid, long near collapse, has reached a critical point
00:27as obsolete infrastructure deteriorates and fuel runs increasingly low,
00:32as Solange Mujan explains.
00:36Swells pounding the coast, winds hitting homes at 120 kilometers per hour.
00:43Oscar, the category one hurricane, was downgraded to a tropical storm
00:47as it made landfall in Cuba.
00:50Oscar, it must be said, is already on Cuban land.
00:53It made landfall near the city of Baracoa on Sunday at around 6pm.
00:58But such weather warnings on television were not able to be transmitted into many homes.
01:03For even before the storm hit, Cuba's been grappling with a nationwide power outage.
01:08It is one of the worst blackouts in years.
01:11On Friday, the power grid failed across the country
01:14when the island's biggest coal-fired power plant suddenly stopped working.
01:18After days without electricity and the sweltering Caribbean heat,
01:22the situation for many Cubans has become untenable.
01:27It's been three days since the electricity has not come on, not even for a moment.
01:31There's no water, there's no food, it's all going rotten.
01:35I feel like crying and screaming. I really don't know what I'm going to do.
01:40Living in the pitch black, as soon as the sun goes down,
01:43many Cubans protested by banging pots and pans.
01:46Authorities said they're doing the best they can to turn the lights back on
01:50but they're calling an energy emergency.
01:53When there is a power outage, one feels powerless.
01:56Without electricity, there is no water, no production of medicine, no food collection.
02:02Electricity is essential and it affects everything.
02:05It creates an annoyance. It's an annoyance for all.
02:10The outage and tropical storm Oscar come as Cuba is in the midst of its worst economic crisis
02:16since the fall of the Soviet Union.
02:18Soaring inflation and a lack of basic goods are commonplace.
02:21And embargoes from the US mean that acquiring fuel and nearby help are all the more difficult.
02:28To discuss the crisis in Cuba, we're joined now by specialist in Latin American politics,
02:34William Leo Grant. He's professor of government at the American University in Washington DC.
02:40Thank you so much for being with us on the programme this evening.
02:43Firstly, people in Cuba, they've endured months of blackouts at this point.
02:48You describe the current situation as unprecedented.
02:51It's the country's longest ever blackout.
02:53Why exactly is this happening now?
02:57Well, I think you've hit upon the two main reasons in your introduction.
03:01The equipment is 20, 30 years out of date and it just breaks down constantly.
03:08And the government doesn't have the resources to update, to modernise it.
03:13The second big problem is that the government doesn't have the money to import sufficient fuel
03:19to power the thermoelectric plants that keep things running.
03:23So even when they've got the equipment working, sometimes they have to have planned blackouts
03:28that shut down parts of the island because they just don't have the functional capacity
03:34to service all the demand.
03:36And this comes as people also suffering from dire shortages of food and fuel.
03:43You yourself have many colleagues living in Cuba.
03:46What is their view on what should be done?
03:52Well, the problem of the government not having the money to import the fuel
03:56extends to the government not having enough money to import the basic food, medicine that people need.
04:05This all goes back to two external shocks that hit the Cuban economy in 2019-2020.
04:13The severe sanctions imposed on Cuba by President Donald Trump
04:18and then the Covid pandemic which shut down the Cuban tourist industry,
04:22which is really the heart of the domestic economy, shut it down for two full years.
04:26And it hasn't recovered even to this day.
04:29So what kind of assistance do you think the US needs to offer now?
04:33Is it time to lift the embargo?
04:36Well, I think the embargo has been counterproductive for a long, long time.
04:40But in this moment of crisis, I think it makes good sense for the United States
04:45and serves the interests of the United States to relax some of these sanctions
04:49and provide humanitarian assistance to Cuba in the form of food and medicine
04:54and particularly some equipment and technical expertise to stabilize the electrical grid.
05:00Because when power goes out to 10 million people, this does not serve anybody's interest.
05:05And what exactly is the embargo aimed at doing?
05:09As you've referred to there, for more than 60 years it's failed to either overthrow the Cuban regime
05:15or foster any real kind of positive change.
05:19Well, I think the embargo is in place partly as a result of policy inertia, frankly.
05:25It's been around for such a long time it would take a real presidential initiative to get rid of it.
05:31President Obama tried to do that, but he ran out of time before his end of his term in office.
05:38The people who support the embargo still see it as a way to force the collapse of the Cuban government.
05:46I think one of the things we've seen in the last few years as things have gotten harder and harder in Cuba
05:53is that collapsing the government will cause more problems for the United States than anything.
05:58A million people have left Cuba as migrants just in the last year
06:02and 800,000 of them have come to the United States.
06:06And that has really exacerbated our migration problems on our southern border.
06:12William, would you have expected President Biden to have done more on making progress
06:17when it comes to normalising ties with Cuba, given what Obama did when he was in office?
06:25I think many people expected that President Biden would carry on the policy
06:30that President Obama adopted at the end of his administration.
06:34He promised to do as much when he was campaigning in 2020.
06:41But when he finally came to office, he really did very little.
06:45He left most of Trump's sanctions in place.
06:49He, in just the last year or two, has relaxed a few of them.
06:54But the Trump policy is still strangling the Cuban economy
06:59and really crippling it and preventing it from recovering.
07:04And how are people feeling there about another potential Trump presidency?
07:07We are just, of course, two weeks from the election in the United States.
07:11What kind of impact do you think a possible Trump presidency would have?
07:17Well, I think there's every indication that a second Trump administration
07:21would go back to the policies of the first Trump administration,
07:26roll back the few relaxations that President Biden has adopted
07:31and just turn the screws even tighter,
07:34hoping that it can finally bring down the Cuban government.
07:39And what do you make of what the Cuban government itself says about the US?
07:43It seems to be blaming entirely the United States for both the embargo,
07:48for sanctions, saying that they are solely to blame
07:51for the kind of shortages that we're seeing in Cuba.
07:54Well, you can't blame the United States entirely for the problems in Cuba.
07:59There are really three things that have contributed to the crisis
08:03that Cuba is in today.
08:05One is the economic problems of Cuba itself,
08:09trying to make a transition from a centrally planned economy
08:12that it had during the Soviet period
08:14to more of a market-style socialism similar to Vietnam or China.
08:20That transition has been slow, it's been halting
08:23and it hasn't really been very effective yet.
08:26So the Cuban economy had real structural problems
08:29when it was hit by Trump's sanctions and then the COVID pandemic.
08:33It's those three things together that really account
08:35for the terrible situation that Cuba faces today.
08:38And we mentioned the US election a little earlier.
08:41Cuba, it's been used as a means of criticism
08:43in American presidential elections,
08:46either to criticize on one side opponents
08:48for being soft on communism, weak on foreign policy
08:52or to appeal to Cuban-American voters.
08:55Is it featuring at all in this year's election?
08:58We have had, of course, a major focus on immigration.
09:03No, interestingly, the policy towards Cuba
09:05has not been a focus in this presidential election.
09:09Part of the reason, I think, is that Florida is no longer considered
09:13one of the swing states that will decide the election.
09:16Over the last several election cycles,
09:19Florida has become more and more solidly Republican.
09:23And so if you're watching the US campaign,
09:26you'll notice that neither of the candidates
09:29is spending very much time in Florida.
09:31They're in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia and Arizona.
09:35Focusing really on the seven swing states currently.
09:38Of course, it's not just the US, as you say, William.
09:41The Cuban allies, Russia, Mexico, Venezuela,
09:44they've all slashed exports to the island in recent months.
09:47What kind of an impact is that having?
09:51The Cubans can't pay their bills to anyone,
09:53not to Mexico, not to Russia, not to China.
09:56Now, some of Cuba's closest friends, Mexico, for example,
10:00has been willing to extend credits to Cuba
10:03and Mexico is sending them some oil
10:05to try to relieve the shortages that they're facing.
10:09But even their close allies have really been urging them
10:12to get their own internal economic policies right
10:16in order to begin to rebuild the economy.
10:19And China, for example, has not been willing
10:23to extend large amounts of aid or investment
10:26because they don't believe that the Cuban economy
10:29is yet on a solid path of recovery.
10:32William, we'll have to leave it there for now,
10:34but thank you so much for your time on the programme.
10:36That is William Leo Grant, Professor of Government
10:39at the American University in Washington, D.C.
10:42My pleasure.
10:44Well, that is it from us for now.