Cuban flags are displayed on a commercial road in central Havana, Cuba, July 20, 2022. ALEXANDRE MENEGHINI/Reuters
The Cuban capital, Havana, will begin a blackout in August, cancel the carnival and take other measures as the country’s energy crisis worsens, state media said Saturday.
The capital, home to a fifth of the population of 11.2 million and the center of economic activity in Cuba, was spared the daily power outages of four hours or more that the rest of the island has experienced for months.
The blackouts sparked several small local protests this summer and fueled a day of unprecedented unrest across the country a year ago in July as discontent simmered.
For now, the blackout schedule will mean that each of Havana’s six municipalities will cut power every three days during the midday peak, according to the local Communist Party daily Tribuna de la Habana, which reported a meeting of local authorities.
The suspension reflects a deepening economic crisis that began with harsh new US sanctions on the island in 2019 and worsened with the pandemic that gutted tourism and then Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Rising food, fuel and shipping prices have exposed import dependence and vulnerabilities such as decaying infrastructure. The country’s economy contracted by 10.9 percent in 2020, having recovered by just 1.3 percent last year.
Cubans endured more than two years of food and medicine shortages, long lines to buy scarce goods, high prices and transportation problems. The blackouts have only added to the frustration, prompting the exodus of more than 150,000 Cubans since October to the United States and more elsewhere.
“This is the moment to show solidarity and contribute so that the rest of Cuba suffers less from unwanted power outages,” said Havana’s Communist Party leader Luis Antonio Torres, quoted by Tribuna.
Torres and others at the meeting insisted they were acting in solidarity with their fellow Cubans, not out of necessity, and announced other measures such as mass furloughs to shut down state-owned companies, work from home and a 20 percent cut in power distribution to private businesses with high consumption. The canceled carnival was due to take place next month.
Jorge Piñon, director of the University of Texas at Austin’s Energy and Environment Program in Latin America and the Caribbean, said he offered a different assessment than Torres. He said the entire power grid was close to collapse after recent fires at two of the 20 already-obsolete plants, and others were constantly failing.
“When you continue to operate the equipment past the capital maintenance schedule, it goes into a downward spiral with no short-term solution,” he told Reuters.
“The announced planned outages are not a sign of solidarity, but rather a necessity to avoid a possible total system collapse,” Pinon said.
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