Cuba Under Siege

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From the New York Times, I'm Natalie Kitroff. This is the Daily. Is the Cuban government, the Trump administration's next target, Mr. Secretary? For the past six months, the Trump administration has been carrying out a maximum pressure campaign against Cuba.

Well, the Cuban government is a huge problem.

Yeah, the Cuban government is a huge problem for us.

So is that a yes? Cuba. I think they're in a lot of trouble. Yes. Yeah, Cuba's going to be next.

Cuba's going to be... Cuba's a mess. It's a failing country. They're going to be next. That campaign has included an oil embargo, telling oil to Cuba, an indictment against the

country's former president and economic sanctions. What we're seeing now is a whole new level of punishment.

“Will you make a public commitment today to rule out U.S. regime change in Cuba?”

regime change? Yes. Oh, no, I think we would love to see that regime there change. And as Cuba's oil has dried out, the country's blackouts have gotten longer and longer and longer.

Cuba is a country running on fumes. The country will run out of aviation fuel today. And fears have grown about a spiraling humanitarian crisis. So island nations power grid completely collapsed today, leading the country with little to no access to basic services like water, food, and medical care.

Doctors here say across the country, people are dying because of the fuel crisis. No power has led to women delivering babies in dark hospitals. And then, while I lay a Cuba's energy minister said the island completely run out of fuel oil and diesel. Cuba reported it had officially run out of oil.

Cuba has essentially run out of oil, not essentially they have run out of oil. Cuba's at the end of the line, they're very much at the end of the line. They have no money, they have no oil. Cuba is in its last moments of life. I do believe I'll be the honor of having the honor of taking Cuba, that's a big

honor. Taking Cuba in some form, taking Cuba, I mean, whether I free it, take it, take it, do anything I want with it. Today, my colleague Lindsey Garrison talks to one Cuban about how his life has been completely transformed under Trump's pressure campaign and what the future holds for the Cuban people.

It's Friday, July 10th. Gustavo Torres Armes is 25 years old. He lives in a residential neighborhood in Havana, just across the bay from the capital center. He lives in an apartment with his mother and father. In every day, he commutes to his job at a contemporary art gallery in the city.

He told me the pay is pretty bad, but he loves the work. So he writes articles about Cuban art on the side for real money. We could have talked about so many things. We could have gone back generations through his family story in Cuba's decades-old conflict with the U.S., or we could have talked about how Cuba's energy crisis, which started around

the pandemic, has only gotten worse since the U.S. blockade in January.

“But instead of going back years or even months, Gustavo thought the best way to explain”

this current crisis was to walk me through a single typical day in a city under siege.

Yeah, so basically I wake up early in the morning, maybe I have water, maybe I don't.

So if I have water, I can get really like normal and go to the bus stop. And if I don't have water, I have to show you this. So if I don't have water, it's more likely than not that I have some stored water, right? Because whenever we had water, we quickly started and I was prepared. But in the rare case that we didn't prepare water, I basically have to cover water.

So I lift in fifth floor in a building. And if I don't have water, I have to go all the way down to the system. It's like the water tank? Yeah, it's like the building's water tank. Yeah, okay.

So I ask him, hey, can you open the system? I have no water. And there's usually like not enough water to pump into the building. But enough water that you can't throw a bucket and bring it up, if it was a well. Okay. So he'll tell me, oh, it's empty or no, we have some.

And if we have some, he will open the system, I will throw a bucket. And I will bring it up to the fifth floor. And I repeat the process at least five times. So I can have a water for that day.

“Have you ever gone down there and the person who kind of man's the tank says we don't have any today?”

Yeah. But in that case, we're just like, oh, well, I mean, what can you do? And just get ready with what we can or try to get ready in other ways. You know, right now, everybody here is struggling more or less in the same way. So if I go to my job and I couldn't wash my teeth, I'm going to tell him listen, I couldn't wash my mouth in my house.

Can I do it here? And he's to be like, oh, sure. And I just wash my mouth in my job, if I have water in my job, maybe I don't have water in my job. Maybe my building doesn't have any water, but maybe a neighbor does. And he'll lend me some water so I can wash my mouth. I see.

But basically, as you can imagine, it's kind of, let's say annoying, having to carry five buckets of water. To your food floor house, just to wash your mouth, your face, and get ready to go to work. But we do that.

“How often would you say that you wake up without water?”

Um, like in an average week, how many days? Out of seven days of the week, maybe six. Wow. Okay. That's a lot.

Yeah. I basically never, I open and have like actual water coming out in the mornings.

Okay. Wow. And, you know, everything in Cuba is there's usually more than it seems at first sight. So in the case of water specifically, it is a combination of, you know, we're in the middle of a drought. So basically we don't have, you know, the rains that fill the water preserves. And that's one issue. Another reason is that the piping, the underground piping that pumps the water to the buildings and the houses, this piping system is extremely old,

is very fragile. It hasn't been properly maintained since from the 30s, the 40s, you know, like long time ago. And so another thing that affects this, and this is more relevant to the whole Trump thing, all of this water piping, like the pumping of the water needs electricity. And if we have like an energy crisis when you have 24 hours or 20 hours with no power,

“you can't pump water because you have no energy. So all of these things combined, you know?”

Yeah. And so after all of this to get ready to work, I got to the last station.

So the problem is, and this is like a specific problem to me and people who live where I live has,

basically in Havana, we have tunnels like another ground tunnel that connects the main city with the rest of the city, right? That tunnel you can't cross it by walking. And you can cross it in like a bike. It's illegal to walk in the tunnel because the tunnel doesn't have the infrastructure for regular people walking. You can only cross it on a car, on a bus, not even a motorbike. It can only be one of those two things. Got it. And the problem is, since we have a fuel crisis,

and we have no buses, and we also have no cars. How do you cross the tunnel? That's like my main everyday struggle to go and to come back or work. I cannot cross the tunnel walking, a little post, but humans tend to accelerate to make a point. So when I told you that we have no cars, it's an acceleration. We do have cars. You will see cars. But it's very low traffic.

Okay, got it. Now the problem is that the only bus that we actually see,

because I mean, this is not an acceleration now. We do not have any buses. Like there is no public transportation. That system has basically collapsed. Since January, you don't see any bus, never. So we have a bus in this side of the city, in Spanish it's called the cyclobos. So the cyclobos and this bus exists at least since the 90s, and it's not for people, it's for bikes. It's basically like a hollow bus that carries the

Yes, that's the thing that I take everything to go to work.

“Okay, are these buses crowded when you get into them? Yes, yes. It's very crowded, but I mean,”

not crowded to the point that it won't be able to close the doors. Okay, but it is crowded. So when I get into the bus, the side of us, and in my everyday commute to work, it's like you're getting into the bus with zombies. The human people look so drain, and it, and I probably have looked like that at some point too. People are just so, so tired. You can see a lot of people with like, you know, hollow faces,

eye buds. You know, the woman don't well make up, and I'm not saying this to be like, to sound like woman has to make up or whatever. I just say it in like, you know, people just stop caring. Or you see that people are like, very, very irritated.

“You know, something that, in another moment, would have been just like, you know, a small misunderstanding,”

could turn into a whole fight because they suddenly got very angry. You know, they just had problems, and they taken it on that day with, you know, it's like that. So it usually takes me like, the whole ride, usually like a half an hour. And I really like looking through the window in that specific bus, right? Because it's mostly just empty road with coast area, because I live very, very, very close to the coast.

And so that bus ride is like, I don't know, maybe 15 minutes of going through an empty road that only has a lot of palm trees and coconut trees, the grass, the rocks, and the sea. So it's, it's a really pretty view. I really like it.

“And then you go into the tunnel, which is like darkness. And when you emerge from the other side of the tunnel,”

it's like walking through a portal.

There is so much trash. So much trash. So after every block, you will see a huge landfill, basically.

We have so many, there is so, so much trash, trash to the amount that it covers the street. This is because there is no fuel for the, the garbage truck. So the garbage truck can come and collect the trash. So we're just drowning in it. And one of the things that you notice in this, this actually really shock me. So in the part of the city where I live, it is very common to just burn the trash. Okay. So the neighbors would put all the trash in this huge landfill and they will just burn it.

But this is very common in this side of the city because again, it's very open. So if you light a fire, it will burn all the trash, die out and nothing will happen. I see. But something that I really notice is that right now, they are also burning the trash in the city. And it's awful. It's so awful because you have all of these cramped apartments and very narrow streets with burning trash and smoke everywhere. And it is like this very

pungent trash, smoke smells, where it stinks so bad. And it is actually like really bad for your health. Like a lot of people are having like breath in problems because of it. And this is something that really shocked me when I saw it because I didn't thought that people would get to the point of burning trash in the main city. But what choice does it have? Like if they don't burn it, the trash is going to eat them.

There are so many mines, there are so many mosquitoes. You know, Kiva has like a whole maniory of mosquito-related diseases. Like mainly chicken gongyang. Okay. We have a lot of

dengy. Yeah. I mean, we just brought out of basically a pandemic of mosquito-related viruses.

That you know, it doesn't get reported because who cares about us? But basically, if you didn't get sick, you knew at least five people who were sick. Wow. It's what's really difficult. And now we have no medicine. There's no pills anywhere. And no feel for like, you know, the exterminators. Uh-huh. Like, you know, there's no feel for the garbage truck. There's not going to be feel for the machine that kills mosquitoes. Oh, my goodness.

And my job is relatively close. So it's not like a long walk. I just walk through the streets.

“And this is like the historic side of awareness. So they are usually like rather tight streets.”

It's like a small maze. They're like a labyrinth because if you aren't familiar with it, you may get lost. So yeah, I just walk through all of these alleys and you usually hear like, when you walk into the street, Kiva music. You know, like salsa, Charanga, reggaeton, and well, some people will tell you that, you know, salsa is not cute. I mean, you see, salsa is quite a free comfort. The way it's cute and anyway.

And then I get to like the alley in which the gallery is. And the gallery is a huge, very modern style gallery. You know, like very tall, signaling, a great open space, great lighting, white walls. And at work, I do my work is kind of office-related. But I also have other

parts of my job, basically giving tours to the gallery. You know, that I visit or scone, they may

have questions, I answer, but we have no tourists. We have like maybe one or two a day, which again, I don't know how it is over there. But here in Cuba, we usually would have way more visitors. But right now, we have no foreigners who were like another main source of income. Like, there are some business that are very, very dependent on tourism that are like basically, basically have been destroyed because of the crisis. So we don't have anyone.

“What is that like for the gallery to be so empty? What is that make you feel?”

Well, at least for me, the first feeling that you feel is that you're there for no reason, right?

You know, like, I have so much difficulty going on in my house, in my everyday life, the commute. And you know, I went through all of that to just sit all day here doing nothing because we have no visitors because maybe the office work that I am doing in the gallery, I've could have done at my house. So you kind of get like this frustrating feeling of like, I came to work for no reason today. But the one visit that you had at the day, like the one and only that you have,

we usually thank you for being open. We love you're like the only gallery that is like open every day.

Because that's the other thing. We are basically one of the few galleries that are open,

basically every day. Most galleries are open like once a week. And I kind of, it did make you feel like at least you did something with your day. Maybe not much, but you know, they did something. It wasn't all for nothing. But it only makes you feel, let's say, good for like maybe an hour because the rest of the day still went on and nobody else came.

And then at the end of the day, when I finished doing whatever I was doing at work, I have to do like the real struggle of going back home, because that's the difficult part not going to work. We'll be right back. I'm Paul Tsunorio. I cover soccer for the athletic. And I made me Lawrence, I cover football for the athletic.

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or sometimes there is a bus in the morning, but there is not a bus in the afternoon, because they're on our field midday. Oh, really. So, there is no cyclobus. Or maybe after work, I decided to be to the friend, or maybe I decided to go to a new art show, and that is something that impacts your everyday life,

“because you have to be like, well, do I visit my friend or do I go to my house?”

Because, you know, it's not sure that I could get into the bus if I visit my friend now. I see, yeah, because you might end up stranded somewhere, depending on the choice you may. Yeah. And so, there's people that I haven't seen in months. Like, this is a feeling that a lot of young people have that you're wasting your youth, you know, because you can't really do the stereotypical things that

somewhere your age would do.

But anyways, so, for whatever reason I got into the bus, I have to improvise. I will basically hit

like, oh, wow. So, I go to the street light that is like in a very busy area, and there's usually

“quite a few people who are doing the same, you know, we're just there all about hitchhiking.”

And most of the cars that go through that street light are probably crossing the tunnel, because they're going to the other side. And they don't charge you or anything, you know, it's just hitchhiking. Because how much does to compare it, how much would a taxi be? Like, if you took a taxi home, how much would that cost you? To put it into perspective, my monthly salary is 3600 in Q1 peso. Now, a taxi that crosses the tunnel, if I take it during the day, it will charge me 700.

And if I take it after 7pm, it will be a thousand. Oh, wow. So, basically a third of my salary.

So, that's like the last choice, because after the measures that Trump took, that same car ride costed me 300. Wow. And suddenly, in January, it's a thousand. Is that when you started to hitchhike like around that time, were you doing that moron? Yeah. Wow. Yeah, I don't really like hitchhiking. Yeah. Because, you know, you're basically counting on the charity of strangers and kind of humiliating for you, you know, it's kind of like begging. Do you feel that sometimes?

Right now? No. I felt like that in the past, you know, when things were better. But right now, things have gotten so low, so bad, that I'm just like, you know, whatever, I have to do whatever it takes. By the way, the drivers right now see how everything is and they are like genuinely trying to help you. I see. And when you get home, what does that look like? Normally?

“Well, I mean, something that you have to understand throughout this whole story. Yeah.”

Is that my house? Because I just realized that I didn't tell you. My neighborhood is in a part of the city that has power all the time. It's not because some like, important person lives there or whatever. It's because the electric, the electric system is on the ground. Oh, okay. And a lot of places here in Cuba have, you know, electric posts. And so those get power out of, yes, constantly. But the underground systems that are very few need to consistently have power, because if you

cut the electricity to that system, it can get moist from the ground. And when you put it back, it creates, you know, like, an electric cut. And it could destroy the whole system. And to repair the system, it would be so insanely expensive and difficult that it genuinely is more effective for the government to just let them have power all the time. God, interesting, okay. So we technically

always have power. That makes me like extremely privileged right now in Cuba. And I'm telling

come back to work. There is no power. I mean, my aunt lives in Cuba, which is like, you know,

“a different province of Cuba. And on average, my aunt has two hours of light at a time.”

By the way, this is not like a rigid thing. I tell you two hours, because that's on average, sometimes she has four hours. Sometimes she only has one. It has happened, that she has none. Sometimes she has been like 24 or 48 hours with no power. But in those two hours, which by the way, they are not like scheduled. She doesn't know when the light is going to appear. And it has happened that she has been sleeping and the light suddenly comes at 2 am. And at that hour she gets up

and she starts washing her clothes, you know, she puts the washing machine and she starts doing stuff because she has to take advantage of whatever she has power. So, yeah, it's really bad. Are you are you pretty close with your aunt? You sound like you're pretty close. Yes, yes, yes, I am very close to my aunt. She's like my, I mean, she is my godmother, you know,

“by the church and stuff like that. And so yeah, honestly, and this is going to sound a little bit”

depressive. But I'm kind of thankful that my grandmother died before all this, because if we have been so difficult for her and for my aunt to go through all of this, you know. When did she pass? In 2021. It just would have been too hard. Yeah, I mean, with whole difficulty, it is to get medicine and stuff like that. It would have been really difficult for us. It would be very, really hard in general.

So depending on how tired I arrived at my house, sometimes I have to do something like sometimes you get from work and your mom is like, quickly, they deliver the rice. We have to go buy it. So, this is one of those things that I have to explain. So, basically, you know, we have

our bodega and right now, you're seeing that there's always a product that is missing. And some

of these products like rice, for example, are delivered to the store randomly and late, like extremely late. It could be that you didn't see any rice in January or in February or in March. So, do you see that there are people waiting for the rice? Like, we live literally like across the street from the bodega. So, we can see when the truck bringing the deliveries arrives. Sometimes my mom just watches through the window or did the truck deliver out and out, but yet.

And, you know, after years of doing this, housewives become kind of like, good at it. Like, they know at which times of the month, usually, the truck arrives. So, you know, they will listen to a truck noise and you'll be loud. Could it be? And you'll be loud, not yet. It's next week. And, yeah, you'll be right. It's next week, not now. So, you know, you'll see that the truck is there and you just start like calling all the neighbors like, "Oh, one inter, the rice is here.

Tell this other person. And, you know, it's a whole, a whole event." And, my role in the grocery shopping

area is basically, I held my mom like carrying the shopping. You go with her to carry it.

I go with her, yes. And, so, we go and buy those stuff if we can find them. I see. And, the rice is not so much of a problem because, in general, rice is pretty cheap. And, most people have rice, like, saved up. So, you can usually get a neighbor to loan you some rice or to sell it to you or to just give it to you. But, there are some products that you use a lot, like cooking oil,

“that if it gets lost like that, then you really feel it because you have to spend a lot of money buying”

it from a private business. Do you know how much cooking oil is costing people? Well, cooking oil is specifically, I can't really tell you right now. I don't know.

literally today and it actually increased rice. It's more expensive now than it was last week.

“So, remember my salary that I told you like three thousand six hundred pesos? Yes. That's my salary.”

My dad's is like four thousand. Okay. My mom's is six thousand. Okay. Because, my mom works

as a chemistry and biology teacher in sports school. Oh, cool. So, basically one pound of sugar

is eight hundred pesos. So, for sugar to be eight hundred pesos, it's like pretty expensive right now. It's like compared to other fast stuff. I just did the math. It's roughly like six percent of your total household income. Yeah, it's quite a bit. And that's just sugar. Like maybe oil, I have to win how much oil right now. But, you know, without cooking oil, you can't cook. So, it's like my household usually by the end of the month is still okay. Like we're not like,

maybe the last week of the month, we can't eat anymore. We're not that bad. But we are very much like ready for the next pay soon. Because food is really, really expensive here in Cuba. It's really expensive. Yeah. There's people who pick food from the trash can. There's people who have having a very, very hard time right now. Do you see in my case, like food out of just yes. And there is something that shocked me a lot. Because I maybe you won't believe this

or maybe your audience won't believe this. But 10 years ago, it would be really, really difficult to find a beggar, a homeless person, somebody didn't out of a trash can, so that that's like

inconceivable 10 years ago. And so imagine going from never seeing a homeless person in your life

to seeing like people like lots of people, okay? Like then 20 people sleeping in the ground in the night, picking food out of a trash can and eating it, that's really shocking because you never saw

“that before. And that's what we're seeing right now. So yeah, food is truly expensive. There's a lot”

of people who don't eat. And again, there is always some product that is missing, cigars, for example, are missing, not cigars because you guys call cigars to a thing, cigarettes are missing. Yeah, right now is the worst time to have any kind of bias here in Cuba. Coffee. And here in Cuba, we drink like black, hard coffee. We don't have like, you know, the the whole Starbucks thing. Like the latte. Yeah, no. If most of the people that I know and certainly myself,

hate American coffee. Like it's so watery for us to eat for our taste. Some people here, they're totally laugh American coffee is asked water because it's just like some browning water that tastes like nothing. We drink like black, strong coffee that is

“you have to drink a little because a lot of it is like bad for you. And coffee is missing.”

And a lot of people miss their coffee, especially other people because other people are used to be drink a lot of coffee. Yeah. And you know, it's kind of, people will be probably more capable of resisting all of this. If you at least had the little things, you know, because you're like, oh, well, I can't even drink my little cup of coffee that I'm used to doing for the last 50 years. I know all people who tell you that they're okay with not eating yesterday,

but that they're missing their coffee. It is always the little things that hurt you the most.

So after that, we all get together in the kitchen. So I will get home. I will change and I help my mom cooking if she needs it. And in the case of cooking, like this is one of the areas where the privilege is the most evident because since we usually have power, we usually have electricity here. We just use our electric oven for cooking. But there are many people who are filling it. A lot of people are basically cooking with wood. You know, with like firewood, it's like a very primitive

thing. You have to cook in the street or you have to cook in like your backyard using like a

people who are like that. Like one of my coworkers, he has a house. So he basically

“uses the backyard to create this kind of campfire. And that's where he cooks and he also uses the”

campfire to heat water for bathing or for boiling the water to drink it. But yeah, you know, people are saying that we are devolving to like in the underful times. And then my dad goes with the news. My mom's start making the dinner. And we all have dinner like this is not like necessarily like a Q1 tradition or whatever. It's more like a my household

tradition that you know, we set the table and everyone sits down at the table and we eat together.

And my mom is very strict with that. Do you ever talk about with your family why this crisis

“is the way it is? Like who who or what you blame? Yeah, we usually talk a lot about the crisis”

because it's something that is like an everyday thing. You know, on the one hand, my family in particular, it's very like anti-Trump because Q1 and the United States were starting to have kind of like better relations. We were starting to see a light at the end of the tunnel with Obama. I'm Trump block that. And so, you know, it was kind of sad because a lot of people fall and you know, maybe we will see relations with Q1 and the United States. But this is like by far the worst crisis

that Q1 has had in like it's existence. For me, at least it feels worse than anything that I have ever lived. And most importantly, unlike many other crisis, we don't really see like a solution or an end point to this one. Like in the past, people were like, well, you know, maybe we have this small fuel crisis right now that we'll get solved when we get more fuel, right? So with this one, it's like we don't see that we'll get more fuel. Like we've had recently some fuel donations from

Mexico, some from Russia, and it's like, that's great. That's fine. But that's only going to last for a while. After that, we're going back to the beginning. So we don't see an end to this. And most people feel mean to that. Feel rather hopeless about it. We're like, things are only going to get worse from here. There's no way out. So, you know, maybe we'll end up like hate, you know, like completely collapse. People don't really see an end to this. I don't know. But I would say that

most people are in Cuba, even if they understand that Trump is making the crisis worse. A lot of people think that the problem of the United States is the key on government and not Trump. And

“that's why some people say, oh, Trump should bomb us. Some other people are like, maybe we should”

like sell the country to China or to Russia. But people just in general feel like there is no future with this government. And I see, you know, I understand all of these positions, like, I get it. Where, where would you say you fall? I don't know. Because I don't know, one thing is what you think is right. And another whole thing is, where you think is possible or more likely to happen. Yeah. Honestly, the ideal thing for me would be that the United States lifts the embargo,

lifts the blockade. And the key on government gets completely changed, like, completely changed.

Some new government comes around and we finally have some form of democracy.

I don't know. The idea today, it's kind of difficult to be thinking in this kind of like higher things like democracy and all of that when you have more pressing things to be thinking about, right? So a lot of people are like, listen, I don't care about dictatorship or democracy. I want food and water and to live a little. You know, when you have been in a crisis with a lot of scarcity

breathe and have things. Yeah. So I around maybe, I don't know, 10 PM. Basically, faith has been

generous with water. Like, if we have water to spare, I would take a bath, to go to sleep, you know. And my room is kind of windy because we're pretty high, you know, the fifth floor. From my window, I can see the sea. And right now, I have like my windows open to get some wind, which is that's like a blessing. But yeah. And when you go to sleep, do you do your anxiety about the next day or is it something you don't even think about because it's normal? They're like,

“yeah, I think it's the later, because at some point, all of these difficult things that we're going through”

become normal, you just get used to them and they get normalized. So you know, so for a lot of students, it's going hard to give you a detailed, what's going on in Cuba thing? Because for us, it's like a normal as it is to you to just go to Walmart and grab a soda for us, that's normal. It's normal to not have power. It's only when you stop and you like look at it, it's like you say, oh, hey, this is not how most people live. This is like not normal. But for all of us,

struggling is normal. Like, I go to my work, for example, and you know, the the dormant, the guy that works at the door of the gallery, yeah, I will go to work and the dormant will tell me,

“oh, thank God, you came because, you know, I feel like painting. I couldn't eat anything yesterday.”

It's normal. I will be like, oh, let's sucks. If I have some money, I try to buy him something, but if I don't have any money, I can't do anything. I can just say, oh, well, you know, maybe seeds. I can't even tell him to go home because the walking back home is going to be really tiring. So he just has to wait. You know, I'm like talking to a friend and the friend will tell me, oh, you know, we have to pay the X amount of money to get some medicine for my grandma. And I will be like,

oh, wow, that's that's really bad. Do you know what I mean? It sounds like I'm an insensitive person,

but it's just basically that we are extremely used to this. It's normal.

It's somebody tells you, I couldn't feed my child just today. Obviously, you feel bad for that. But also, you're used to it. And if you have a child, you know how difficult it is. So you're basically saying, oh, yeah, I know. I know who that is, too. We're constantly sharing stories of this, which is kind of crazy when I see sometimes like this, well, not think that's because we don't have to talk about the Instagram rules of like,

“American things like, you know, like, good out that friend that is always complaining. You have to”

take care of your own, you know, like mental health and so on. And I'm like, that's that's so impossible for us. I can't got the person that comes to me venting every day because I would cut every person in my life. And they will probably cut me out too. We are constantly complaining is the only way that we can't let go of steam. But yeah, instead of being like this

dramatic thing of like, oh, my goodness, it's basically no, it's like an everyday conversation that

you have at the bus stop with a stranger, you know? Your small talk is basically like I didn't eat yesterday. Yeah, basically, basically, yeah, basically, the small talk is venting. But again, you're kind of used to it here. It's, you know, for us, that's normal. So yeah, I, I go to sleep like, yeah, I don't have trouble sleeping because right now, there is a lot of heat in Cuba. It's a very hot and humid climate that we have right now.

So I at least can't put on, you know, my fun and open my windows and sleep. I may have to buy another fun soon because this one is, you know, he has, he has been at least 10 years, but, you know, at least I have one.

On Monday, Cuba suffered its third nationwide blackout since January.

Protests broke out in the streets of Havana and the country's energy minister said officials were working to restore power to the island. The darkness has hit Gustavo's home, too. His building is now experiencing blackouts that stretch 12 hours at a time. We'll be right back.

“Here's what else you need to know today.”

Did he talk about what he had done?

Uh, it didn't go into detail. He just, I just asked an in-personant, what he said was true than I before, and he said it was. During a preliminary hearing for Tyler Robinson, the man charged with killing Charlie Kirk. Prosecutors presented evidence showing that Robinson had told his then romantic partner that he regretted what he'd done.

“Uh, I started crying a little bit and said he wishes he hadn't done it.”

The prosecutors' evidence included messages that Robinson had sent to his friends

confessing to the crime, saying, quote, "Look at the photos from the surveillance footage." It was me. Robinson hasn't yet entered a plea and he could face the death penalty. And, on Thursday, the Department of Homeland Security said that the Mexican man that ICE agents had killed during a traffic stop this week was not the target of their investigation. The agents were actually looking for two people from Guatemala and they thought

“that one of them was in the van driven by Lorenzo Salgado Araojo, the man that they shot and”

Houston on Tuesday. Araojo had lived in the United States without authorization for 35 years. Homeland Security officials said that he tried to use his vehicle as a weapon, though no video or other evidence has emerged to back up that claim. Today's episode was produced by Lindsay Garrison. It was edited by Michael Ben Wall, fact checked by Susan Lee, and contains music by Marion Lazzano, Pat McCusker,

Alicia B. E. tube, and Diane Wall. Our theme music is by Wonder Lee. This episode was engineered by Alyssa Mosley, special thanks to Emiliano Rodriguez, Megah, and Elda Cantu. That's it for the Daily. I'm Natalie Kitrolas. See you on Sunday. This week on the Wire Cutter Show, smart devices aren't just for the techy folks. They can make your home more accessible for all kinds of needs. So that's disabled people,

but that's also people aging in place. People with new babies have talked to a friend who said it erased all arguments with her husband about who had to get up when they were already in bed to go turn off the light. It's saving marriage is out here. Find out how on the Wire Cutter Show, wherever you listen.