By Claudia Dupeirón
Havana, Mar 17 (EFE).– Havana citizens spent Tuesday sitting on the edges of sidewalks, visibly exhausted after almost 24 hours without electricity.
”Critical, what we are experiencing is extremely critical. The situation is so critical that we can’t take it anymore, and that’s why things that we’ve never experienced are happening now, like protests, people taking to the streets, and the food shortages,” Carmen de La Caridad Valdés Leyva, a resident of the Central Havana municipality, told EFE.
The Caribbean nation remained mostly without electricity on Tuesday morning after its sixth nationwide blackout in less than a year and a half.
According to official data, Havana, one of the cities where service is being restored most quickly, had 45% of its customers with power by midday, according to information from the state-owned Electric Union (UNE).
Cuba has been experiencing a severe energy crisis since mid-2024, aggravated by the US oil embargo that began in January, which has paralyzed the economy and increased social discontent.
Several protests have taken place in recent days, mostly in Havana and Morón, the latest ending violently, resulting in five arrests.
“We never imagined we would live through this, and it’s already becoming a very ugly reality… If we take to the streets, they repress us. There’s violence, and as a mother, you try to watch over and keep your children from doing it. But there comes a point when you just can’t take it anymore,” explained Valdés Leyva.
The energy crisis in Cuba was already critical before this latest nationwide blackout. In Havana alone, power outages lasted 15 hours a day, and in the provinces, up to two days.
After the latest massive blackout, schools in the capital opened on Tuesday morning, while the Ministry of Energy and Mines (Minem) reported on social media that the National Electric System (SEN) was being slowly restored.
By early morning, the SEN had been restored from Pinar del Río (far west) to Holguín (east), meaning the grid was connected, but the electricity was not yet flowing (for that, generating units needed to be brought online).
“Since yesterday (Monday), we’ve been without power. No electricity, no water. Without power, nothing works. And when they restore it, it will be by circuit (…) So they disconnect power here, connect power there, and it’s just patch after patch,” Juan Ochoa Martínez, a Havana passerby, told EFE, clearly frustrated.
“The power goes out here every day. And since yesterday (Monday), we’ve been without electricity for 25 hours. We’re using candles for light… The food is spoiling, and we have to keep our refrigerators empty,” a distraught Ana Margarita Peña Torres, a resident of the San Leopoldo neighborhood in Havana, told EFE.
Independent experts indicate that Cuba’s energy crisis stems from a combination of chronic underfunding of the sector and the ongoing US embargo. The Cuban government emphasized the impact of U.S. sanctions and accused Washington of “energy strangulation.”
Several independent estimates suggest that between 8 billion and 10 billion dollars would be needed to repair the electrical system. EFE
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