By Nelson Acosta
HAVANA (Reuters) -Daily blackouts averaging four hours or more have become the new normal across Cuba’s capital of Havana, an unsettling sign of a still-unresolved energy crisis as the sultry Caribbean summer sets in.
Havana’s misfortune follows a string of nationwide blackouts over several months, most recently in March, that plunged the country’s frail grid into near-total disarray, stressed by fuel shortages, natural disaster and economic crisis.
The major commercial hub on the island and a top tourist destination, Havana has long endured occasional blackouts but until this year had been largely shielded from the worst of the outages by the grid operator.
“People are stressed,” said Aramis Bueno, a 47-year-old resident of the densely populated Central Havana neighborhood of Dragones, as he sat on his doorstep during an evening blackout this week.
“It’s not easy living like this. Look at what time it is. We haven’t been able to shower, to eat … because of the blackouts.”
The worsening power outages in Havana come as the United States has severely tightened sanctions on Cuba, returning the island nation to a list of state sponsors of terrorism and ratcheting up restrictions on remittances, tourism and trade.
Blackouts in the capital, unlike in much of the rest of the country, are largely scheduled, and far shorter than in the outlying and more rural provinces, where outages sometimes span 15 hours or more per day.
But they are increasingly the talk of the town in Havana.
“It’s terrible, it’s terrible. The electricity system in this country right now just isn’t working,” said Dayamí Cheri, 52, a resident of cramped Old Havana. “With this heat and no electricity, no one can survive.”
Recent outages led to school and workplace closures, reinforcing an already deep shortfall in economic output, which fell 1.9% in 2023. The economy did not expand in 2024, when more severe blackouts set in, though the government has not yet released last year’s growth figures.
There are glimmers of hope, however.
Cuba is making progress this year on a China-backed plan to install more than 50 solar parks capable of churning out more than 1,000 megawatts of electricity.
Eleven such solar parks have been installed since February, offering the promise of a better future, though most Habaneros say they’re still hunkering down for a long summer.
“I was born with blackouts,” said Yasunay Perez, 46, of central Havana. “This is nothing new.”
(Reporting by Nelson Acosta; Additional reporting by Anett Rios and Mario Fuentes; Editing by Dave Sherwood and Sonali Paul)
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