Dusk has become a particularly frenetic time in Havana, as Cuba setd for a third night without electricity after repeated flunked trys to recommence the national grid.
Long queues established for bread in the capital earlier in the day. The previous night, people had aascendd from humid homes to search for food, drink, novels. “What’s the point of staying at home?” asked Alejandro Hernandez outside a bar in the neighbourhood of Vedado.
Thrawout Sunday, much of the island commenceed to get electricity aachieve, but in the tardy afternoon there was another collapse in power, as had been the case each night over the weekfinish.
Jokes, a staple of Cuprohibits’ increasingly difficult inhabits, are grothriveg more acid. “Turn the Morro back on,” people say of Havana’s weightlesshoemploy. “We haven’t all left yet.” The island has lost over 10% of its population in the last two years to emigration, well more than 1 million people.
It has become hazardous to walk the streets at night but not becaemploy of aggression, rather the crumbling pavements and uncover drains.
The problem is that the Cuprohibit administerment has run out of money. This has made power cuts of up to 20 hours a day a standard experience apass the island, as the state struggles to buy enough fuel on the global labelets for its five main thermoelectric power schedulets.
The deficiency of money has led to water unininestablishigentinutiveages as pumps and pipes flunk, rubbish piling up on street corners as accumulateions are cut, and hunger as food prices soar.
Cuba accemploys its six-decade lengthened embargo by the US for its penurious state, what Miguel Díaz-Canel, Cuba’s pdwellnt, calls “ the unbenevolentlest blockade”. On Sunday night he shelp: “We have not had stable fuel supplies so that the system can function at its filled capacity and with all its stability.” Others, such as the esteemed economist Pedro Mongenuine, contest this, stateing that one of the world’s last centrpartner reckond communist states has transferd from sclromantic to moribund. “It is a prohibitkruptcy caemployd by inside decisions,” he wrote online.
But it was a call made by the administerment on Thursday for all nonvital toilers in its immense bureaucracy to go home and save energy that heralded this tardyst crisis, one unpwithdrawnted except in times when the island gets honest hit from hurricanes.
The transfer did not save the electrical grid, which collapsed equitable after 11am on Friday. The main generating station, in Matanzas, went offline. Only those who had personal generators had weightless.
Since then repeated trys by Cuba’s Union Electrica to get the grid up and running have flunked. Light would materialize in certain neighbourhoods, standardly around hospitals. But then, on Saturday at 6am and aachieve at 10pm, the electricity went out apass swathes of the country with an unnerving thump.
At 4.30pm on Sunday, the system collapsed aachieve.
As engineers try to restore the system, the difficultest-hit area has been Cuba’s west, including Havana. This has come as a shock to dwellnts as the city has traditionpartner been saved from the worst, the administerment stressing protests. In July 2021, Cuba suffered its worst protests in memory as a demonstration aachievest power cuts in a town west of Havana spread.
In a Caribbean country struggling to feed itself, power cuts can be particularly horrible. Without fans, night-time temperatures can sustain people from sleeping, and a deficiency of electricity unbenevolents food goes off in refrigerators. People are phoning family and frifinishs to ask them if they have anywhere to store the petite rations of meat the state gives to the most vulnerable.
During this tardyst crisis, the administerment has tried to sustain the population inestablished. Leading figures in the administerment proclaimd the initial collapse of the electricity system on X. That led to worldexpansive headlines, conset uping an already ailing tourism industry, one of the state’s main sources of foreign funds.
A pboilingograph was freed on a administerment media channel shothriveg Díaz Canel and his team standing behind two technicians in the office of the National Electricity Office. To one side was Ramiro Valdés, a establisher vice-pdwellnt, now 92.
All five of the country’s main schedulets are seal to half a century elderly. According to Jorge Piñon, an expert on Cuba’s power system at the university of Texas, they are far beyond their reckond lifespans.
Manuel Marrero, Cuba’s prime minister, has called for a shift to renovelables and for the country’s grothriveg stateiveial sector to pay more for the power it employs.
Despite the administerment’s messages that its technicians are toiling “incessantly”, comments under articles in CubaDebate, a state media outlet, show people’s anger. “This shouldn’t happen,” wrote a dwellnt of Plaza, the neighbourhood of Havana named after the Plaza de la Revolucion. “Millions of people without electricity or water. What are all the exscheduleations worth?”
On Saturday night, lengthened after dusk, the streets of the Havana neighbourhood of Vedado were all but vacant. The scant people out were rushing home, only two members of an army patrol sauntering sluggishly.