Havana/Without much dissemination and hardly any public calendar, the long blackouts have returned to Havana. The Cuban capital, which has experienced weeks of energy privilege, while the provinces were plunged into power cuts of more than ten hours a day, has not managed to stay out of a crisis in which the lack of fuel and the deterioration of the infrastructure are mixed. thermoelectric plants on the island.
This Thursday, the scenes of last summer were repeated in the most populated city in the country. Outside a private store on Carlos III Avenue, Central Havana, an employee waited bored while avoiding the heat of the “powerless” premises. Behind him, the suggestive name of Las Columnas stood on a counter with cell phone cases, cell phone charging cables, devices to measure the number of steps taken each day and speakers. bluetooth.
All the products on offer in small businesses require being connected to electricity, at least to charge. An electricity that Havana residents are beginning to lack, even in neighborhoods that in previous years were “forgiven” for power outages due to the presence of several hospital centers or the presence of an underground electricity system, so obsolete that the authorities themselves fear turn it off.
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“I walked near the Hermanos Ameijeiras hospital, the entire area was turned off but you couldn’t hear the electric plant, which is a dragon, when you turn it on you can hear it for several blocks around,” a retiree who got frustrated trying to get her phone told this newspaper. pension from an ATM on nearby Belascoaín Street, out of service due to lack of power.
The famous La Cubana hardware store, on Reina Street on the corner of Lealtad Street, popularly known as Feíto and Cabezón, was also closed to the public due to the blackout. Despite selling its products in freely convertible currency (MLC), a modality designed for those who have income in foreign currency, the store lacks a power plant system that allows it to continue operating in these circumstances.
The customers who came to the place pressed their faces, with a frustrated expression, to the windows of the entrance to try to see the merchandise they had come to buy or if an employee deigned to approach and give an explanation about the schedule of the possible reopening. “We are already in the same situation, if the blackout lasts until after two in the afternoon it is very likely that no one else will be served today,” said a man who traveled there from Cojímar in Eastern Havana. “They told me there was a piece here that I needed for the sink but it has been a total frustration.”
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At La Algarabía, a private cafeteria on Neptuno and Escobar streets, also in Centro Habana, silence was the tone this morning. At the tables, in the dark, despite the strong sun outside, there were no customers consuming and the shop’s workers were sitting near the entrance waiting for the power to return. “Without light there are no profits, without light this does not move,” stated one of them.
A map of part of the city, with zone 1 surrounded in red, became popular this Thursday in several WhatsApp groups. The image warned about the neighborhoods that were without electricity, a cartography of the blackout to which the eyes of Havana residents must get used to again and plan their lives according to the energy block that corresponds to them.
This Thursday, the inhabitants of the La Timba neighborhood, one of the poorest in the municipality of Plaza de la Revolución despite its proximity to the Council of State, experienced the same six-hour blackout as the wealthiest residents of the surrounding area. on Kohly Avenue, in Nuevo Vedado. The tall buildings near Tulipán Street and Boyeros Avenue, built in the years of Soviet subsidy, suffered the worst due to the paralysis of their elevators, essential to access the highest floors.
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“To make matters worse yesterday no water entered this area so today we are in a blackout and without water, we do not know if when the electricity returns the cistern will have been able to fill or not,” laments a neighbor of the 18-story building located on Factor Street. , near Conill, and known as “the pilots’ building” by the professional sector that benefited from its apartments in the 1980s.
On social networks, residents in other provinces barely hid their joy because the Cuban capital was finally supporting them in the energy crisis. “Ah, because the electricity also goes out in Havana,” said an Internet user ironically on the Facebook page of the unpopular Electrical Union of Cuba, which for this Thursday predicted a deficit of 1,210 megawatts. But, beyond regional rivalries, the signal sent by the Havana blackouts was “bad for everyone,” summarized another commentator.
“If there are already blackouts in Havana, it means that what awaits us in the rest of Cuba is total darkness,” the woman lamented.
