Living in scarcity

Like many Cubans, Sandy Cancino Pérez deals with electricity shortages daily. He uses solar panels to recharge his phone. The outages also affect cooking, internet access, and work. “Because of the electricity situation, a lot of families sleep outdoors under the stars,” he told me.

Cancino Pérez said many Cubans have found creative ways to deal with the shortages, which have occurred repeatedly in recent years but have been compounded by a fuel shortage. Some residents have relied on family members in the United States and elsewhere to send money for solar power systems.

“We try to live as well as possible under these conditions, but it’s not really a lifestyle,” he said.

On Saturday, the same day another power outage plunged Cubans into darkness, a humanitarian caravan from Italy, Spain, and the United States, among other countries, arrived with solar panels, food, and medicine.

The Cuban Electric Union blamed Saturday’s outage on an unexpected failure at the Nuevitas thermoelectric plant in Camagüey province. The blackout was the island’s second in a week and third this month, leaving the country’s some 11 million people without power.

Such outages have become common in Cuba, where aging electrical infrastructure is failing. But government officials have also blamed the severity on an ongoing U.S. energy blockade that has halted oil shipments to the country. U.S. officials say the current hardship means Cuba is due for a political change. More frustrated Cubans agree with Trump’s stance as the economic and power struggles leave many with limited access to food, fuel, and other basic amenities.

In January, U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order imposing tariffs on countries that sell or provide oil to Cuba. Since then, public transportation has reduced its services. Hospitals canceled surgeries, and tourism—the island’s major income source—has nearly halted.

The sounds of banging pots have become a norm for Cubans as residents protest longer power outages under the Communist Party. In the city of Morón, residents recently hurled rocks at and attempted to set fire to the party’s offices.

Jeanne Pernia is the operations director for Latin America at PassionLife, a pro-life missions group. She said the last time her team held any training in Cuba was in December.

“With all the chaos that’s going on right now, it’s just not feasible to go because we don’t know when riots can break out and when it can actually be unsafe to be on the island,” Pernia said.

Demonstrations have grown from 60 last month to 130 in the first half of March, according to Cubalex, a U.S.-based human rights organization. Earlier in March, students staged a peaceful protest outside the University of Havana to decry disruptions to their studies.

“There’s no organized opposition in Cuba because they’ve all either been put in jail or they’ve left the country and are mostly in the United States or in Spain,” Charles Shapiro, former U.S. ambassador to Venezuela, told WORLD.

According to Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel, the island has not received oil from foreign suppliers for three months, though officials have said a shipment from Russia is in the works. Cuba produces about two-thirds of the fuel its economy needs.

Last week, the U.S. State Department said the blackouts signal the Cuban government’s inability to cater to the people’s basic needs. Trump also said he would have “the honor of taking Cuba” soon.

Díaz-Canel has said his government is in talks with the United States. But they’ve shown little sign of progress. Cuba’s Deputy Foreign Minister Carlos Fernández de Cossío said the military is bracing for possible military aggression from the United States.

Shapiro said Cuba has a record of holding on in difficult circumstances and resisting pushes for change. “Are they at the point where they have no alternative? They may well be, which means they might just have to accept this,” he said.

Pernia, from PassionLife, says her husband is Cuban but has not returned to the country in more than four decades. “I have to believe that this is the end of the tunnel, that we will see a new Cuba with very, very brilliant people that would love to go back,” she said. “But so much change still needs to take place.”