Cuba Dispatch

Cuba's revised Decree 325 would let foreign firms hire Cubans directly, making optional the state agency that converts their wages into hard currency for the government. Washington spent the same five weeks designating the arms industry, the nickel monopoly and the traders who sell its output. An OCDH survey taken in between found 84 per cent of Cubans distrust the reforms.

Cuba's national grid disconnected completely at 22:43 on Sunday 2 August, the sixth total collapse of 2026. Wire coverage blamed storm damage to a 220kV line. Cuba's own grid controller, speaking on state television, blamed a 110kV substation fault in Havana and made no mention of weather. A liberalising private-sector decree took force today, and the Federal Register shows GAESA itself has been sanctioned since May.

Washington's Cuba campaign opened a new front on 23 July, sanctioning the island's medical-missions export, among its largest hard-currency earners, and naming Public Health Minister Jose Angel Portal Miranda personally. The same action publicly dated a specific GAESA evasion transfer at the port of Mariel. Asked to account for a disappeared artist, three jailed protesters and a rented-out medical workforce, Havana answered with rhetoric, not remedy.

Havana raised bottled cooking gas 64 per cent on 16 July and blamed an escalating US blockade. Washington had designated two Cuban fuel importers three days earlier, and Cuba's own Vice Prime Minister had already said on 3 July that fuel now arrives in shipping containers, not tankers. The grid collapsed totally twice more in the same week.

Cuba convened the UN General Assembly's annual embargo debate for 7 July, then its own grid and security state supplied the week's sharpest facts. The national power system collapsed on Monday 6 July after a unit failed at the Nuevitas plant, the fourth total blackout of 2026. One day before Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara's five-year sentence was due to expire, guards removed him from Guanajay prison to an undisclosed location; Lowdown could not verify where he now is.

Cuba legalised private banks and dollar accounts on 18 June. Five days later the US Treasury sanctioned Banco Financiero Internacional, the state bank most of those dollars must clear through, while the Supreme Court opened US courts to lawsuits against Meliá and Iberostar. The grid lost 64% of the country to a single outage on 21 June, and Prisoners Defenders logged more than 175 new political prisoners in the first half of the year.

Cuba's National Assembly passed 176 economic reform measures on 18 June, its deepest market opening since the 1960s nationalisations: private banks, dollar accounts, fuel imports and a cryptocurrency framework. The same 48 hours brought Rubio's dismissal, a European Parliament sanctions vote, and protesters in Santa Clara shouting 'down with the dictatorship'. The reform unlocks the exact functions the sanctions have just disabled.

Washington designated Miguel Diaz-Canel personally on 4 June, the first sitting Cuban head of state on the OFAC list, then sanctioned the national oil company CUPET on 11 June. A new ownership-tree rule widened the net to the whole military economy. Prisoners Defenders logged a record 1,281 political prisoners and one death in custody.

OFAC's wind-down window for foreign firms dealing with GAESA closes on 5 June, and the exit rush arrived early: four hotel chains walked, Visa and Mastercard suspended Cuban cards, and the informal dollar hit a record 600 pesos. Havana lost gas to much of the city, the first cacerolazo protests broke out, and Russia and China sent birthday telegrams to a 95-year-old Raúl Castro now under a US murder indictment.

In 72 hours Washington moved on Cuba across three fronts: a second sanctions wave reaching the civilian ministries and the party, a criminal indictment of Raul Castro over the 1996 Brothers to the Rescue shoot-down, and a carrier strike group in the Caribbean. The economic siege is now a multi-domain pressure posture. Havana calls it coercion.

Three fractures in one fortnight. The Sovcomflot Universal sits 1,000 nautical miles out with 270,000 barrels of diesel and no lawful Cuba destination after GL 134B expired on 16 May. The eastern provinces have run on isolated microsystems since the 14 May grid disconnection. Marco Rubio reopened the Vatican channel on 9 May.

Trump signed a new executive order on 1 May targeting Cuban officials and their adult relatives, hours before Raúl Castro stood beside Díaz-Canel at a rally fronting the US Embassy. The Senate had blocked a war-powers check 51-47 two days earlier. By 5 May the Guiteras plant was offline and Russian crude was admitted to be running out.

Treasury extended the licence covering the next Russian tanker bound for Havana on Saturday 18 April, eight days after a US government aircraft landed in Cuba for the first time since 2016. A two-week ultimatum for two named dissidents lapsed without releases. The grid eased in Havana while the eastern provinces held at 24-hour blackouts.

Tonight the Cuban grid is forecast to black out 1,732 MW of load at the 20:30 peak, more than half of projected demand. The fuel shortage driving that collapse is no longer incidental to US policy. It is the product of a two-tier sanctions architecture that eased Venezuelan oil sales to most of the world on 18 March while keeping the Cuban state explicitly carved out, a choice Havana now frames as a deliberate energy siege.