{"id":676069,"date":"2026-03-23T13:35:16","date_gmt":"2026-03-23T13:35:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/676069\/"},"modified":"2026-03-23T13:35:16","modified_gmt":"2026-03-23T13:35:16","slug":"cuban-immigrants-in-jacksonville-call-for-action-as-island-faces-widescale-blackout","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/676069\/","title":{"rendered":"Cuban immigrants in Jacksonville call for action as island faces widescale blackout"},"content":{"rendered":"

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. <\/strong> \u2013 A worsening power-grid crisis in Cuba has left millions without steady electricity, water and, in some areas, medical care, prompting worry among Cuban families living in Jacksonville who cannot reach loved ones on the island.<\/p>\n

Mildred Sanchez said she has not heard from relatives in Cuba in days and that the lack of power has made basic needs \u2014 refrigeration, clean water and food \u2014 unreliable.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been four days since I\u2019ve heard anything from them,\u201d said Sanchez.<\/p>\n

Sanchez emigrated in 2014 with her husband and two daughters and said she had kept in regular contact with aunts, uncles, brothers and sisters until the recent blackout. <\/p>\n

She described living conditions on the island as \u201ccatastrophic\u201d and said food scarcity has become more acute because refrigeration is unavailable.<\/p>\n

People spend the night in the dark on the Malecon during a blackout in Havana, Cuba, Saturday, March 21, 2026. (AP Photo\/Ramon Espinosa) (Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All right reserved)<\/p>\n

Sanchez said families fear food will spoil quickly and that staples such as chicken are harder to find. She described the emotional strain of watching family members go hungry from afar.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s really sad to know that you have a plate of food here and it\u2019s easy, and you don\u2019t think twice about it. To know that your family, your aunts that raised you, your brothers that were born with you and grew up with you, that all of you had a life together, and now you know that they don\u2019t have anything to eat. They don\u2019t even have a piece of bread, not even a piece of bread, because that kind of life doesn\u2019t exist for them,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n

Local immigrants organized a gathering on Sunday to call attention to conditions on the island and to push for greater awareness and unity among the Cuban community in Jacksonville.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe people [are] asking for a change of the government,\u201d said Yoarlene Rodriguez, a Jacksonville resident. \u201cThere is no human rights, freedom of speech, you can\u2019t believe different than the government because of that. You can go to jail even [being a] minor.\u201d<\/p>\n

Officials and experts say Cuba\u2019s power failures stem from a mix of aging infrastructure, limited fuel imports and growing international pressure. <\/p>\n

The report provided in the source material links new pressure to U.S. restrictions on fuel shipments connected to a separate international incident, a claim that needs verification.<\/p>\n

For families in Jacksonville, the crisis is personal and immediate: Unanswered calls, concern for elderly relatives and anxiety over how long the outages will last. <\/p>\n

Copyright 2026 by WJXT News4JAX – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2013 A worsening power-grid crisis in Cuba has left millions without steady electricity, water and, in…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":676070,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5136],"tags":[5229,799,57214,3188,723,7310,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":["post-676069","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-america","tag-blackout","tag-cuba","tag-fl","tag-florida","tag-jacksonville","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116278757146754138","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/676069","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=676069"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/676069\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/676070"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=676069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=676069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=676069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}