On the night of March 21, 2026, Cuba’s electrical grid collapsed for the third time in a month, the result of a fuel shortage triggered by a U.S.-imposed oil embargo, decades of underinvestment in a crumbling grid and, most consequentially, the post–Nicolás Maduro halt of Venezuelan crude, on which Cuba had depended for years to cover roughly a quarter of its oil needs. Eleven million people plunged into darkness. Hospitals, public utilities, and other critical services were thrown into chaos.
At the United Nations General Assembly, at summits, and on the floors of international forums, the leaders of Latin America’s democratic left have not been shy about where they place the blame. They have thundered. They have invoked international law, sovereignty, and human dignity to condemn Washington’s embargo against Cuba. But what about the more than 1,200 political prisoners sitting in overcrowded cells in Cuba, a historic record, their only crime having dared to demand freedom? Or the estimated 2.75 million Cubans who have fled the country in recent years, one of the largest peacetime exoduses in the western hemisphere’s modern history?
