“Like then: nobody does not give up! “. The newspaper ´Granma`, the official body of the Communist Party of Cuba honored Juan Almeida Bosque, one of the guerrillas of Fidel Castro who took power in 1959. The evocation, with his call not Every time the island is completely darkas happened on Wednesday of this week. According to ´Granma`, the light began to return in homes. Havana has dawned with almost 80% of electricity coverage After hours of irritation that the government took very seriously, to the point of militarizing points of the capital. “We are still standing, fighting,” said President Miguel Díaz-Canel, to inform through x the difficulty return to the previous situation.
The memory of the social outbreak of July 11, 2021 It emerges every time problems go through the population. The one of the blackouts is recurring. Five were recorded in less than a year. “The work for the restoration of the National Electrical System (SEN) continues,” the government newspaper promised. The greatest of the Antilles is nevertheless under the “energy contingency”, an elusive way to recognize the extreme precariousness of the supply and supply network.
The disconnection of the SEN obeyed, once again, to failures in the Antonio Guiteras Thermoelectric Central, in the province of Matanzas, about 100 kilometers from the capital. The lack of light stages the dual character of the Cuban present. In households they illuminated with candles. Some state agencies operated with their own structures. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Tourism (Mintur) guaranteed the functioning of its services to “transmit confidence and security to all our visitors.” He recalled that “Most of our hotels have electric generators and resources necessary to operate normally”. The environment remained in the dark.
A crisis that does not cease
The debacle of the electric service was accentuated from last year with three total disconnections of the system. Cuba consumes eight million tons of fuels, but only produces three million and must acquire the remaining total. Russia contributed dozens of ships to the situation not aggravated. Venezuelan oil does not flow as before. Mexico helps the missing not know so acute. The energy crisis is part of a global deficit on the island. Cuban GDP contracted 1.1% in 2024. In five years a contraction of 11% accumulates. The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), predicts a new drop of 1.5 points by 2025. The deterioration of living conditions unnerves the population which expresses his fury through social networks.
Under the faint light of a dark lamp, problems and conflicts are evident in that country that has incorporated last year into its vocabulary The word “adjustment” to refer to the rearrangement of a drift economy. Only the pruning of the Argentine ultra -right Javier Milei has been greater in the region.
The daily life is exasperating for an island that, despite its permanent conflict with the United States, which is responsible for the unfeasibility of the system, It matters from the American ports part of food for millions of dollars. The lack of eggs was attenuated with those purchases. “The devastation of egg production in Cuba in the era of ordering -Many greater than the collapse of special period Of the 1990s, it is one of the most serious edges of current food insecurity, “said economist Pedro Monreal.
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