“The Cuban government and Communist party are facing the worst crisis since the collapse of the Soviet Union, both economically and politically,” said Bill LeoGrande, a Cuba specialist at American University in Washington. “The government is broke, it doesn’t have the money to import enough food or fuel.”

The repeated failure of the power grid and a hurricane that has swamped the island’s eastern end has many Cubans fed up, posing a challenge to the Communist government.

Cubans in the eastern provinces of Holguín and Guantánamo braced for a direct hit by Hurricane Oscar on Sunday afternoon. As the Category 1 hurricane made landfall near Baracoa, a coastal in city in Guantánamo province, around 5:50 p.m., most of the country still had no power.

Electricity has been restored to almost 90 percent of Havana, the Cuban capital's energy supplier reported Monday, but several provinces remained without power four days after the start of a

Electricity has been restored to half of Havana, the Cuban capital's power company reported Monday, four days after the start of a nationwide blackout that authorities have struggled to address.

Millions of Cubans awoke on Sunday to find their homes still without power after another partial grid failure overnight, deepening a crisis that has raised questions over the viability of the government's efforts to reestablish electrical service.