‘There is no money’: Cuba fears total collapse amid grid failure and financial crisis

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/oct/26/cuba-power-grid-failure-financial-crisis

29 comments

  1. A terrible situation. I was going to say that I admire the Cubans for adhering to their ideals despite the enormous hardships they face, but it seems like anyone with a dissenting opinion is jailed. So, you sort of *have* to adhere to that ideal if you want to not be in jail.

    Cubans could be very rich and comfortable if they joined the free world.

  2. This is how regimes die. When reality and circumstances beyond their control prevails. Perhaps the socialist paradise in the Tropics will come to an end.

  3. Cuba should ask its allies, Russia and Venezuela, for help.

  4. Now they just need for Mr. Burns and Homer to show up and they’ll be set.

  7. It’d be fun to see a new Cuban revolution throw out the Cuban Communist Party, this weekend’s elections in the country of Georgia throw out the Russia-friendly Georgian Dream party, and a new Iranian revolution throw out the mullahs, all at once. Take out several Russian allies simultaneously, plus wipe out the major source of terrorism support in the Middle East at the same time.

  10. If you just stopped acting like rebellious teens you’d get all kinds of tourism and trade you could handle. Maybe stop making friends with the enemies of the nations all around you?

  11. US should’ve kept Cuba after the Spanish-American War, would’ve been better for all parties today with Cuba as a state in the US.

  12. The stories Cuban Americans tell prior to immigrating are rough.

  13. I can’t say I endorse the barricade US had on Cuba for so many years.

    That said, it was never a one-way relationship. You can’t just claim “Well some US presidents were bad to Cuba and set relations back!”, as if only US actions alone determine the course of the relationship.

    Look, Cuba is a nation lead by adults, and adults should be held to the standard that they can pick and choose their relationships. You have a small island nation on the border of a superpower, and they can’t read the room to make a smart geopolitical decision to join the rest of the Western world.
    If Cuba did something to piss off the US, it’s on them to try and solve the issue. They have the weaker negotiating hand, they should have been the ones trying to fix it.

    If we compare this to an MMORPG, Cuba is kinda the equivalent of spawning in a really bad location and getting fucked by RNG on your stats roll and armor. So it has a choice to continue leveling a broken character while attempting to clear a raid solo with a trash off-meta build out of sheer stubbornness. Or it can join someone else’s party, follow the orders of the party leader, and share its loot. But if Cuba makes a whiny tantrum wanting also to be party leader and doesn’t want to follow the build-strat that the leader is telling them to run, they will be kicked from the party.

    Instead, Cuba decided to join an axis of dictators halfway across the world, punish their own citizens who try to leave, and glaze up oppressive totalitarian shitholes like North Korea that are literal hellscapes on earth. All this while Cuba’s leadership is so mentally distorted that they pretend that they claim they didn’t do nothing wrong.

    This is almost like someone whining on an MMORPG reddit about “toxic raiders” kicking them from a party, only for you to find out the person complaining was ironically the most toxic, unpleasant asshole to work with.

    This is the geopolitical equivalent of acting like a dumbass.

    I can feel bad for its people, but am I expected to have sympathy for its government?

  16. This is how complacency kills a regime. Cuba was bankrolled for decades by the USSR, and instead of using the budget surplus of the period to develop and diversify the economy, they just insisted on luxury export products.

    People like to blame the US for all of Cuba’s woes but truth is Cuba has a system which is too expensive for its economy to sustain. Even if all sanctions by the U.S. were lifted Cuba would still be unable to sustain itself.

  17. Yeah it might be true that there is no money and the grid is colapsing resulting in loss of power for an entire nation, but atleast they don’t have to live in this horrible capitalistic system.

  19. Cubas population is actually declining at insane speeds due to how high emigration is. Some sources say they’ve dropped by almost 20% down to 8.5 million people while others say it’s about 10% and is just below 10 million. Either way that’s a massive loss for any country.

  21. Wait mate, you don’t understand, this is not real Communism!

  22. Guess there is about to be another flood of floating refugees headed to the Florida Keys.

  23. So what happens now? Looting? Rioting? Killing?

    How do they come back from this?

  25. I don’t think money is the problem. Your government is…..

  26. Shit like this is why I prep. I just went through 11 days without power or running water thanks to Helene but we were fine. No gas, no stores open, no internet or phone. Our community came together and shared resources until the roads were cleared and aid arrived about 4-5 days after the storm. And our water is still not safe to drink, even though it’s flowing.

    But on the other hand… the situation in Cuba was caused by government incompetence. People are *angry*. And tourists are stranded with no resources. If I lived in Cuba and had a generator or solar, I wouldn’t leave my place until the power came back on. And I wouldn’t use the generator or have lights on at night. There will be riots.

    And lots of folks are saying that the power will *never* come back on, but that’s just straight up fear. But then again, apparently government officials are starting to leave the island now? What a mess.

  27. There goes my tax dollars to jump start their nation again.

  28. Well this is easy, when the military takes all the money and spends it like idiots do, guess what? YOU HAVE MOOOONNNEEYYYY! So when something, like I don’t know, the entire country’s electrical grid system fails and needs replacing, there’s no Bank to back it period! So no money to pay for materials and you can’t force materials to just appear, unlike the slave labor they have delightfully enjoyed the last 75 years or so.

  29. I think most Americans want a good relationship with Cuba

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