Dusk has become a particularly frenetic time in Havana as Cuba braces for a third power outage after multiple failed attempts to restart the national power grid.
Long lines for bread formed in the capital from early in the day. The night before, people had come out of their damp homes and were looking for food, drink, and news. “What's the point of staying home?” asked Alejandro Hernandez outside a bar in the Vedado neighborhood.
Throughout Sunday, electricity started coming back to many parts of the island, but by late afternoon power was out again, something that had happened every night of the weekend.
The jokes that have become a staple of Cubans' increasingly difficult lives are becoming increasingly sour. People say about the lighthouse in Havana, “Please bring back the Moro.” “We haven't all left yet.'' The island has lost more than 10 percent of its population, or well over 1 million people, in the past two years.
Walking the streets at night has become dangerous, not because of violence but because of crumbling sidewalks and drainage ditches.
The problem is that the Cuban government lacks funds. As a result, power outages of up to 20 hours a day have become common across the island as the state struggles to buy enough fuel on world markets for its five main thermal power plants. .
A lack of money has led to water shortages due to broken pumps and pipes, garbage piling up on street corners due to curtailed collections, and hunger due to soaring food prices.
Cuba blames the 60-year U.S. embargo, which Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel called “the cruelest blockade,” for impoverishing the country. “We don't have a consistent enough fuel supply to allow the system to operate with maximum stability,” he said Sunday night. Others, such as respected economist Pedro Monreal, dispute this, arguing that one of the world's last centrally planned communist states has gone from sclerotic to moribund. “This is a bankruptcy caused by an internal decision,” he wrote online.
But the government's massive bureaucracy on Thursday telling all non-essential workers to go home and conserve energy is unprecedented except when the island is hit by a hurricane. This signaled the current crisis.
The measures failed to save the power grid, which collapsed just after 11 a.m. Friday. The main power plant in Matanzas was shut down. Only those with personal generators had light.
Since then, repeated attempts by Cuba's Union Electrica to get the grid online have failed. Lights appear in certain areas, often around hospitals. But then the power went out again at 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. Saturday, causing power outages across the country. With an unsettling impact sound.
At 4:30pm on Sunday, the system collapsed again.
The hardest hit areas are western Cuba, including Havana, as engineers work to restore systems. This came as a shock to residents, as the city has traditionally been saved from the worst of the situation, but the government feared protests. In July 2021, Cuba experienced its worst demonstrations in living memory as demonstrations against power outages spread in towns west of Havana.
Power outages could be particularly devastating in Caribbean countries struggling to feed themselves. Without a fan, the nighttime temperatures will keep you awake and the lack of electricity will cause food in your refrigerator to disappear. People are calling family and friends to ask if they have a place to store the small amounts of meat that the state is giving to the most vulnerable.
Throughout this recent crisis, the government has sought to keep the public informed. Key government figures announced the initial collapse of State X's power system. It made headlines around the world and disrupted the state's already struggling tourism industry, one of its main sources of foreign funding.
A photo of Díaz-Canel and his team standing behind two engineers in the office of the National Electricity Authority was published on government media channels. On one side was former vice president Ramiro Valdez, now 92 years old.
The country's five major factories have all been established for nearly half a century. They have far exceeded their planned useful life, said Jorge Piñón, an expert on Cuban power systems at the University of Texas.
Cuban Prime Minister Manuel Marrero has called for a transition to renewable energy and for the country's growing private sector to pay more for the electricity it uses.
Despite the government's message that technicians are working “incessantly”, comments on the article in state media CubaDebate show people's anger. “This should not happen,” wrote a resident of the Plaza district, named after Havana's Plaza de la Revolucion. “Millions of people don't have electricity or running water. What are all the explanations worth?”
On Saturday night, well past dusk, the streets of Havana's Vedado neighborhood were nearly deserted. The few people who had been out were hurrying home, with only two military patrolmen walking slowly.
