Havana is no longer free from eight-hour blackouts

Havana/“Boy, here in the neighborhood we are used to darkness around this time,” says Rodolfo, a 64-year-old man, sitting at the door of his house on Martí Street, the main avenue of Regla. “At 6:00 pm, the most central area looks like a lion’s den. Maybe some light here and there, from a cafeteria with a plant, but the rest of us have to go out on the sidewalk with chairs or sit on the walls to wait for the current to arrive.”

Yaima has already gotten used to blackouts skipping schedule. “You are more or less guided by what the company provides,” he says, although lately they last up to 20 or 30 minutes longer than advertised. “I’m used to it, but this week, as has happened on other occasions, schedules have had nothing to do with it.”

The people of Havana are the least punished by the Electrical Union, the rest of the Cubans protest, but the energy crisis is already hitting to such an extent that it does not forgive anyone. “With the greatest calmness in the world they send the message that blocks such and such have had to be affected due to a generation deficit and they ruin one’s planning – protest -. On Wednesday my children went to bed with a loaf of bread, because at 10 at night, when the current came, they were not going to eat.”

That day, several units of the Felton, Santa Cruz del Norte, Renté and Cienfuegos thermoelectric plants were damaged or undergoing maintenance and 91 distributed generation plants were out of service due to lack of fuel. The supply drop of the main partners, Mexico and Venezuela, is – so far this year – 35% compared to 2024, a year in which there had also been a sharp cut in oil imports. The dimensions of this crisis have reached an unsustainable point and have forced the six “blackout blocks” to be “affected” simultaneously on multiple occasions. Power outages during the early morning hours exceed 3 and 4 hours.

The endless explanations from the authorities about the state of the national energy system and how it will be fixed – an announcement that has been made for at least five years in which it has only gotten worse – fill minutes on Round Tables and stellar newscasts that will not reach those who may be interested. “Here it’s been more than a week since you can’t watch television from four to eight or nine, approximately. Damn this. Oh, and that’s not to mention the water, which comes here every other day and at that time. When the current comes, what’s left is a trickle of water,” Rodolfo continues in a very alarming complaint in the current health context of the Island.

This Thursday, in his first intervention in what will be a daily space to report on the arbovirus epidemic, the head of Public Health Epidemiology, Francisco Durán, recalled the importance of drinking water against the risks of dehydration from dengue and chikungunya. But nothing is going in favor of the population. The blackouts complicate the pumping of water and Cubans are forced to store it, favoring the presence of the mosquito.

As if that were not enough, the telephone signal and internet are lost with the blackout. “On other occasions here the power went out and there was no connection, but you went out to the roof and there you could more or less access WhatsApp or Facebook during the four hours of blackout,” says Yaima, who also saw her job as a sales manager for an MSME affected. “Now it’s gone, and the next second you lose the signal completely. You can’t call your mother, you can’t entertain yourself or, worse, as is my case, you can’t work. I charge by commission, per client I serve. Imagine, with these blackouts I can only work three or four hours a day,” he laments.

The winter coolness is also fleeing the Island this year and, after a few days of milder temperatures at the beginning of the month, the heat keeps demand high for the use of fans and air conditioning. This Friday, 3,200 megawatts will be needed – the authorities estimate – during peak hours, but the system can barely generate 1,494, much less than half. Meanwhile, the authorities will continue to engage in their war against The Touch and in the new “program to correct distortions and boost the economy,” which will be discussed today in a Round Table that neither Rodolfo nor hundreds of thousands of Cubans will be able to see.