On October 27th 2024, Oscar hurricane hit Cuba, as a category 1 hurricane near the city of Baracoa before weakening to a tropical storm. The region of Guantánamo was the worst hit, with over 1,000 homes damaged, not to mention, the whole nation facing blackouts after the officials had said the power was slowly being restored. However, it is important to note that this power cut was a follow up from the island-wide shutdown of Cuba’s electricity grid on Friday (October 25th) after one of the major power plants failed. The citizens have therefore been experiencing unstable electricity for days and trying to adapt to such circumstances: on Friday, in Havana, motorists attempted to drive at streets lacking working street lights with only a handful of policeman directing traffic, classes at school, were cancelled (from Friday onwards (Monday to Wednesday confirmed)) and overall only “indispensable workers” were expected to show up to their jobs. Once the hurricane hit, children were seen sleeping on the streets as it was fresher than at home and people were playing cards in the streets to distract themselves from the starvation, the heat, and the disappointment with the disorganisation of the situation.
As dissatisfaction spread, the citizens were already ‘thrown’ at the streets since there were only a few privileged families who had houses with generators, the people decided to protest the three-day-long power failure. Only on Sunday there were two small protests in which the citizens walked around their streets making noise by banging on pots and pans, also disrupting traffic. Although power had been temporarily restored to about 216,000 people in Havana on that exact day, a city containing 2 million people (about 10.8 % of the population), the power grid quickly collapsed again for the fourth time since Friday. The government also had their reactions to the situation: Cuban President Miguel Diaz- Canel stated on a video posted on X that “we are not going to allow acts of vandalism and much less alter the tranquillity of our people” speaking up against the protests, and Cuban Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz communicated about the country’s limited production, paralysing their economy, in order to “generate (power) to our people”. Unfortunately, for the past week, Havana was dealing with residents queuing for hours for a few loaves of bread.
There are hopes that at least in two weeks time the country will be able to recover from the series of unfortunate events. In contrast, many Cuban officials are also blaming the increased US economic sanctions as a factor, impoverished by the state’s lack of infrastructure. Many are pointing too to the supposed traditional allies of the country like Venezuela, Russia and Mexico who had barely been supplying the island with some barrels of oil to help keep the lights on. Overall, we can only aspire that Cuba will soon be out of its misery.
