The collapse of the National Electric Power System adds to months of endless blackouts that have forced residents to reorganize their lives around darkness.
By Julio Cesar Contreras (14ymedio)
HAVANA TIMES — The blackout arrived again without warning, like a visitor who no longer even needs to knock on the door. This Wednesday, a new disconnection of the National Electric Power System (SEN) left much of the country without electricity and once again pushed Matanzas into the gloom it has learned to live with for months. However, during the first hours many residents did not even notice that it was a nationwide system failure. In this city, accustomed to long blackouts, darkness has become part of the landscape.
On San Ignacio Street, in the Pueblo Nuevo neighborhood, several people remain seated on the porches of their homes as if time had stopped. A woman repeatedly checks her phone, hoping that the data signal—also lost with the electrical collapse—will return. On the sidewalk a thin stream of dirty water runs from a house and disappears into the drain. No one seems to be in a hurry. When electricity disappears for so many hours, daily life slows down until it is almost suspended.
“How long is this going to go on!” Adriana shouts from the doorway of her house so the whole neighborhood can hear. The single mother has spent two days unable to give her youngest child a hot meal. “There isn’t even enough time to cook the rice. Between the times they turn it off and on, we don’t even get an hour of electricity,” she laments. What little she had in the refrigerator ended up stored in a neighbor’s freezer so it wouldn’t spoil.
In recent weeks, blackouts in Matanzas have exceeded 30 consecutive hours. People go out to sleep on their porches, balconies, or in their doorways to take advantage of the cool early-morning air—an image many thought had been buried with the hardest years of the Special Period. But now it returns like a collective déjà vu.
On a nearby block, two neighbors talk while sitting in front of a peeling facade. The man, wearing yellow shorts and flip-flops, wipes sweat from his face while trying to guess when the electricity will return. Beside him, a woman holds a warm can of soda. Neither speaks about the blackout as something extraordinary. In Matanzas, being without electricity no longer causes surprise, only resignation.
The same scene repeats a few houses away, where an elderly man sits in the doorway of his home with a bag beside him. He looks toward the almost empty street while waiting for time to pass. Without television, without a fan, and without a radio, the hours grow longer. The only distraction is watching the few pedestrians who cross the sidewalk under the sun.
The collapse of the National Electrical System also left much of the mobile connectivity out of service. Hilda, a retiree who lives near Plaza de la Vigía, suddenly lost the video call she was having with her grandson in Spain. “Etecsa raised its rates, but it hasn’t been able to buy new batteries for its towers,” the woman protests. Many times she has to walk almost a kilometer to the square to find a signal.
“I’m a teacher by profession, with more than 30 years of experience,” she says. “But I’m retired and I don’t qualify for any of those solar panels they say they’re handing out,” she adds, referring to the modules being sold on installment plans to outstanding professionals in their sectors. In her house she also has no idea when electricity will return or how long it will last once it does.
The unstable voltage in recent weeks has further punished household appliances. “My daughter in Cardenas had a freezer burn out,” Hilda explains. “In half an hour they turned the electricity off and on five times. No appliance can withstand that.”
For Ricardo, a machinist who has a small private workshop in Pueblo Nuevo, the nationwide failure means another day without income. “I thought today I could catch up on some of the delayed orders, because lately they’ve been turning it on for a little while in the afternoon,” he explains. But with the entire system disconnected he cannot do anything at all.
The man also hasn’t slept well for days. “My wife and I can’t get any sleep. When the power comes on in the middle of the night we jump out of bed to cook, run the washing machine, or charge the phones.”
Then morning comes, and the exhaustion follows them like a shadow.
In Matanzas, that scene repeats in hundreds of homes: families who get up at two or three in the morning when they hear the hum of the refrigerator or the sudden start of a fan. In that brief window of electricity, they cook, wash clothes, charge their phones, and try to get ahead on any pending household tasks.
Meanwhile, on San Ignacio Street the silence slowly settles in. With no phone coverage and no clear news, neighbors share information by asking from porch to porch. No one knows when the power will return.
After more than a day without electricity, some people have even stopped waiting. Sitting on improvised chairs or on the edge of the sidewalk, they simply let time pass.
“You just have to ground yourself,” Ricardo says, shrugging his shoulders. “Because if you start thinking too much about this, you go crazy.”
First published in Spanish by 14ymedio and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.
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