Cuba’s government has spent the last days attempting to get the island’s national grid functioning after repeated island-wide blackouts. Without power, sleep becomes difficult in the heat, food spoils and the water supply fails.

Parts of Cuba’s communist system still function: the municipality sent Maria food. “We are three families here,” she said. “I live alone, the lady who lives next to me [does] also, and there are two children, the children’s mother, her aunt and an elderly man.”

A week after the blackout, the island has returned to the status quo ante with regular power cuts of up to 20 hours a day. But the crisis has left a deep, melancholy dread about the future.

    • Letstakealook@lemm.ee
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      27 days ago

      Well, we can blame both of our right-wing parties for contributing to the situation by enforcing the longest running embargo. The first break from this was during the Obama administration, but it was too little too late, and we immediately returned to the previous status quo.

      • Dead_or_Alive@lemmy.world
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        27 days ago

        The break during the Obama administration caused Florida to turn red.

        No party in the US is going to touch Cuba until there is a regime change which Cuban expats approve of.

        This is simply Cuban’s punishing Cubans.

        • InverseParallax@lemmy.world
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          27 days ago

          Boomers migrating down caused it to turn red.

          Cubans are a minority, Florida is a combination of Cuban, southern, and retired boomer, it’s staying red for a century.

          • Dead_or_Alive@lemmy.world
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            27 days ago

            FL turned red prior to the post Covid migration due to Obama loosening relations with Cuba.

            South Florida voters traditionally provided a counter balance to the Republican dominated North. Post Obama’s detente with Cuba, Florida has gone red in every presidential election because South Florida Cuban expats broke with Dems and were flipped Red.

            Cubans in Fl fled their homes in Cuba for a reason and are very anti communist /anti Castro. The rest of the state really doesn’t give a shit about Cuba, they just don’t want illegal immigration.

            Dems want to win back Fl or at least put it in play, Republicans want to maintain their edge. Neither party will touch Cuba until there is serious regime change.

            This is Cuban expats forcing regimes change in Cuba. The rest of the US doesn’t care.

    • AmidFuror@fedia.io
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      27 days ago

      The wrong type of asylum seekers?

      You can presumably understand where they’re coming from, even if voting for the party that hates people from “shithole countries” is not in their interest.

  • InverseParallax@lemmy.world
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    27 days ago

    So, I’m just spitballing here, but maybe we could send a cvn down to help? Think 1 could power the island itself.

    Like, as a gesture of good will?

    • Varyk@sh.itjust.works
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      27 days ago

      are you serious? and I don’t mean that as an insult, I’m actually unsure if you are serious.

      a total collapse of Cuba is the whole reason the US has been blockading them for half a century.

      infrastructure collapse is happening specifically because the US won’t allow Cuba to make infrastructure deals and technology deals with other countries without facing explicit and implicit sanctions and severe material limits.

      desperate poverty is exactly what the US government has been working towards inflicting on Cuba for decades.