Evening arrives in Havana with a familiar hesitation. The sky deepens into indigo, the air cools slightly, and for a moment the city holds its breath, waiting to see whether light will follow darkness — or whether darkness will simply stay.
Across Cuba, prolonged power outages have become a defining feature of daily life. Entire neighborhoods slip into blackness for hours at a time, sometimes without warning, sometimes on a schedule that shifts from week to week. The rhythm of ordinary routines bends around the uncertainty of electricity.
In kitchens, meals are planned around what can be cooked quickly. In hospitals and clinics, generators stand ready, rationed and monitored. In homes, fans fall silent, refrigerators warm, and mobile phones are conserved like small, glowing lifelines.
Cuba’s aging power infrastructure, strained by decades of underinvestment and limited access to spare parts, has struggled to meet demand. Breakdowns at major thermal plants, fuel shortages, and technical failures have compounded into a system operating close to its limits.
Officials acknowledge the severity of the crisis. They describe a fragile grid burdened by obsolete equipment and constrained by economic pressures that restrict imports of fuel and components. Efforts to repair facilities and add renewable capacity continue, but progress is slow and uneven.
The outages unfold against a backdrop of renewed friction between Havana and Washington.
Cuban authorities argue that long-standing U.S. sanctions have sharply reduced the country’s ability to purchase fuel, access financing, and conduct international transactions. American officials maintain that sanctions target government entities and human rights concerns, not humanitarian needs.
Between these positions lies a population navigating consequences in real time.
Small businesses close early or not at all. Public transportation stalls. Students attempt homework by candlelight. Conversations drift, inevitably, toward electricity — when it left, when it might return, how long the generator fuel will last.
In recent weeks, scattered protests and public expressions of frustration have emerged in some communities, reflecting the strain that prolonged shortages place on already difficult living conditions. Authorities have responded with a mix of appeals for patience and warnings against disorder.
Cuba has faced energy crises before. The memory of the “Special Period” in the 1990s, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, still lingers in collective consciousness — a time when blackouts, scarcity, and improvisation defined everyday survival.
For many Cubans, today’s outages revive those echoes.
Yet endurance remains part of the national character. Neighbors share extension cords. Families pool ice. Radios run on batteries. Life adapts, as it has many times before.
Still, adaptation does not erase fatigue.
The longer the darkness lasts, the heavier it feels.
Officials say incremental improvements are expected as repairs come online and fuel deliveries arrive, though they caution that stability will remain fragile in the near term.
No single announcement promises an immediate return to reliable power.
No switch waits to be flipped that will solve everything at once.
As night settles again, candles appear in windows. Phones glow faintly in hands. The city exhales and settles into another uncertain evening.
Cuba waits.
For electricity.
For relief.
For a light that feels both literal and symbolic.
AI Image Disclaimer Illustrations were created using AI tools and are not real photographs.
Sources (names only) Reuters Associated Press BBC News Al Jazeera The Guardian