Thursday, October 17, was the darkest day in Cuba in all of 2024. The population began to complain and demand the “resignation” of its leaders on social networks. La Unión Eléctrica, the state electricity company, confirmed that more than half of Cubans were without electricity service. Without being able to hide under the rug the darkness in which the island remains, like a black hole in the middle of the Caribbean Sea, its Government recognized the obvious: that the country is going through an “energy emergency situation” that led to the closure of schools in all teaching levels and the suspension of cultural and recreational activities, in order to prioritize hospitals and food processing centers. This Friday the situation was precipitated and the Ministry of Energy and Mines reported that at 11 in the morning “the total disconnection of the National Electroenergy System occurred.” As of early afternoon, Cuba was still “in the process of restoring” the blackout.
The president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, ordered his officials to inform the people on Thursday night of the “complex scenario” and that there seems to be no immediate solution, not even in the medium term or by 2025. The Cubans waited patiently. until 8:30 at night arrived to hear officials explain that the situation is remarkably critical, but that the country is not in a “bottomless abyss.” Prime Minister Manuel Marrero said that the three main factors that affect the electricity generation deficit are “the state of the infrastructure, the lack of fuel and the increase in demand.”
Although disconnections and breakdowns are becoming more frequent in a completely outdated thermoelectric system without resources for its maintenance, Marrero highlighted that the lack of fuel is the biggest problem why Cubans are living almost completely in the dark. . Lately, the country – which is usually not clear enough about the amount of fuel it receives or stops receiving – has seen a decrease in the arrival of oil that comes from its main trading partners, such as Mexico, Russia or Venezuela, and it is a fact that it does not have foreign currency to import it. Díaz-Canel has said, as he usually does, that the main cause is “the economic war” and the “financial and energy persecution of the United States” towards Cuba, which “makes it difficult to import fuel and other resources necessary for that industry.” .
Although they did not offer details, officials said Thursday that the Government had a plan to “maximize Cuban oil production” and plans to increase the use of renewable energy sources. Marrero points out that the solution to the crisis consists of “eliminating dependence on fossil fuels, replacing it with clean energy.” For the moment they have taken “exceptional measures” that paralyze most activities and the normal course of life on the island.
In her home in Sagua la Grande, in the center of Cuba, Katia Ojeda not only did not have electricity to be able to tune in to television and find out what the officials had to explain about the electricity cuts of more than 15 hours, but she also did not care. hear them. I have stopped watching the news and information programs of any kind. “They are lies and more lies, it is better not to even see them,” he says. Ojeda believes that the fact that he spends more than half of his day in the middle of a blackout is “abusive.” “They turn on the light for one or two hours during the day or at dawn, whenever they want,” he says. In those two hours he runs to prepare all the food he can because he knows that the electricity will last very little.
At the beginning of this energy crisis, Ojeda says that they cut off his electricity for six hours, then it went to eight, and now it has gotten out of hand. His 12-year-old girl stopped going to school, like almost all students in the country, after an announcement from the Ministry of Education in which teaching activities were suspended.
Maydelin Cordero’s two children are also not attending school in Cruces, in the province of Cienfuegos. “Life in Cuba becomes unbearable. It is very sad to see my children living in this situation, right now I cannot give them even a glass of cold water,” says Cordero. “Yesterday we only had two hours of electricity, from 8 to 10 at night, and today we are in a blackout, classes in schools were suspended. “The situation in the residential sector was supposed to improve, but we have not seen any improvement. On the contrary, what is said is that the blackout will last up to 24 hours.”
The Government announced that the little electricity it has will be used to prioritize the residential sector, and that it is planned to increase the payment rate for the non-state sector, which has grown in recent years with the authorization of small and medium-sized companies or MSMEs to oxygenate the island’s economy.
Without being able to promise otherwise, officials said they expect this energy crisis to last up to more than two years. The situation, which has become desperate and is compounded by the lack of food, a deterioration in health services, education and almost all sectors of Cuban society, has not only generated the largest migratory exodus in the history of the country , but it has made Cubans not infrequently take to the streets with cauldrons to demand change. In the month of August alone, the Cuban Conflict Observatory (OCC) recorded almost 700 protests throughout the country, the majority related to discontent over services such as electricity, water, sanitation or transportation.