Cuba’s Darkness and the Delusion of Socialist Progress
No society has ever leapt forward into modernity without a supply of plentiful, reliable, and affordable energy. Not one. Roads, refrigeration, clean water, education, communication, and commerce all depend on a stable electricity grid and supply. Without it, even the most basic services collapse into dysfunction. Cuba, for all the talk, is no exception. In fact, it is an exceptional example of energy failure in the Americas.
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Cuba produces significantly less electricity than the average country in Latin America. Considering that it is supposed to be a socialist paradise in which no one goes wanting, it is one of the main indications of economic failure. After six decades of communist-directed economy and a few experiments with foreign investment, its economic outputs and the standard of living the Revolution provides its people remain wanting of basic services, let alone services to propel an economy in the 21st Century.
The island’s catastrophic, manmade energy insecurity is not new, and it is worsening. Since 2020, its electricity output has dropped sharply. Blackouts, once occasional, are now chronic. Power shortages derail every aspect of life, disrupting hospitals, forcing schools to close, and spoiling already-scarce food supplies. In 2024, Cuba’s total electricity generation was around 14,334 GWh, down from 19,070 GWh in 2020. That is a decline of nearly 25 percent in just four years.
Per capita, each Cuban receives about 1,300 kilowatt-hours (kWh) per year, barely enough to power a fridge, a fan, and a few light bulbs. By comparison, the average American consumes nearly 13,000 kWh annually, ten times more. Chileans, once under a Marxist grip, consume today nearly 5,000 kWh per year, and even Mexico, now on its second consecutive socialist administration, averages about 2,800.
Cuba, by contrast, surpasses Haiti and Nicaragua, the two poorest countries in the hemisphere, with Haiti consuming a meagre 74 kWh per capita, and Nicaragua around 680. This is not the mark of a revolutionary success that some would like to believe. It is the result of decades of centrally planned economic mismanagement.
Cuba’s energy shortage is not an isolated issue. Electricity is one item on a long list of persistent scarcities. The country suffers from chronic food insecurity, importing over 80 percent of its food. When the power fails, water pumps stop, and citizens must go without running water. Medicine shortages are so frequent that even basic drugs like aspirin or insulin disappear for months at a time. Cuba cannot refine enough fuel to meet its needs and depends on unreliable allies to stay afloat. Infrastructure, including roads, ports, and the electric grid, is deteriorating to the point where it is no longer safe for use. Meanwhile, a bleeding population continues to flee in the hundreds of thousands each year, seeking a life of dignity elsewhere. These are not consequences of a blockade, but the outcome of top-down economic control and ideological sclerosis.
Yet this bleak picture has not dissuaded admirers in the West. When Fidel Castro died in 2016, Jagmeet Singh, the failed leader of Canada’s New Democratic Party (Canada’s version of a Labour Party), praised the dictator as a “larger-than-life leader who served his people.” Then Prime Minister Justin Trudeau issued a similar eulogy, calling Castro a “remarkable leader” who brought health and education to the Cuban people. Such praise is not only naïve—it is intellectually bankrupt and morally unserious. The facts do not support the myth. In Cuba today, doctors are underpaid, schools are collapsing, and people stand in line for hours for bread and fuel. Modern comforts, let alone digital innovation, are unthinkable without a reliable energy backbone. Cuba does not have one.
Under such circumstances, to speak of Castro “lifting people out of poverty” while Cubans ration candles and cook on charcoal is an insult to reason and dignity alike. It mocks the Cuban people.
In recent years, China has stepped in as Cuba’s patron, replacing a bankrupt Russia and a near-collapsed Venezuela. In 2025, Beijing began building 55 solar parks across the island, with plans to reach 92 by 2028. These installations could provide up to 1,640 GWh per year, theoretically raising per capita electricity availability by around 12 percent—a non-trivial gain. However, even that would leave Cuba with only around 1,450 to 1,600 kWh per person, still far below regional norms and the standards of a thriving modern economy. More critically, Cuba’s aging grid infrastructure cannot fully absorb this new capacity. There is little or no battery storage, the transmission system is antiquated, and maintenance is inconsistent. More production doesn’t solve all the problems for the decrepit regime.
In exchange for its help, China receives favourable concessions. It enjoys special tax privileges, the freedom to repatriate profits without restrictions, and the ability to bypass Cuban labour laws. In effect, Cuba sells its sovereignty for kilowatts in ways that should make Karl Marx cringe. Long gone are the days when the Revolution portrayed itself as the guardian of Cuban independence.
Without massive cash infusions, institutional reform, and a reorientation toward free enterprise, Chinese aid will be, at best, a temporary solution to an arterial hemorrhage. The truth is that Cuba’s energy poverty cannot be resolved under the current management. And that reality is the legacy of the Castro regime; it is a country once rich in culture and potential now reduced to dependency, dysfunction, and decay.
Cuba’s slow collapse should serve as a stark warning to Western democracies that are flirting with economic dirigisme. Such an example would inspire only fools.
Whether it is Cuba’s command socialism or Canada’s state-managed vision of ecological and social “justice,” the results are predictable: shortages, inefficiency, loss of liberty, and declining living standards. No ideology, no matter how noble its claims, can substitute for sound economic principles and real productivity propelled by the decisions of its individuals. Central planners become adept at rationing scarcity. They cannot ever produce abundance. Canada’s health bureaucracy, which claims to be a system of healthcare, is a prime example.
To European and Canadian admirers of Cuba’s revolution: it is time to wake up. A country that cannot refrigerate its food or power the lights of its most modest households is not a model to copy. It is a mirror, reflecting the ultimate fate of all economies that sacrifice freedom, competence, and realism at the altar of ideology.