For Marylin Alvarez and her family, like countless other Cubans, the question is no longer if the power will go out, but when — forcing them to implement ingenious alternatives to sustain daily life as the island undergoes its most severe energy crisis in decades.
Since December last year, when the government stopped supplying their cooking gas, the family had relied on an electric burner — until persistent blackouts made that solution impractical.
“The blackouts are quite severe and, with gas in short supply, I have to be running around to get food on time,” said Alvarez, a 50-year-old cosmetologist living with her husband and two teenage daughters in the populous Bahia neighborhood of Havana.
Photo: AP
What happens when even the electricity is gone — a reality for several days a month and often for hours each day? That is when the family’s ingenuity truly kicks in: With no gas and no power, they turn to their charcoal stove.
Leisure time also requires creative solutions. Alvarez’s husband, Angel Rodriguez, an auto mechanic, found a way for the family to catch up on their beloved telenovelas even during blackouts. He ingeniously assembled a television using an old laptop screen and an electric motorcycle battery.
“It doesn’t last very long, but it’s good enough for my family to watch TV or have some entertainment,” Rodriguez said.
Photo: AP
Electricity cuts, a problem for months, have intensified in the past few weeks due to persistent fuel shortages at power plants and aging infrastructure.
“We do our best,” Alvarez said.
In the past eight months, Cuba has experienced four total blackouts, plunging the entire island into darkness.
The government has said that a plan to address the problem includes the installation of solar parks and repair its generators with the support from China and Russia, but little progress has been made so far.
In the outskirts of Havana, 45-year-old blacksmith Edinector Vazquez is busier than ever, serving a growing clientele of less affluent families.
Vazquez makes charcoal stoves from metal scraps that he sells for about US$18 — the equivalent of a Cuban state worker’s monthly salary — but he said he offers discounts to low-income families.
Natividad Hernandez, with slightly more resources than some families, invested in solar panels, but her budget did not allow for installing batteries and other components, limiting their use to daytime hours and when there is some grid electricity.
As blackouts increase, Cuba’s online shopping pages are inundated with ads for rechargeable fans, lamps with chargers and charging stations — mostly imports from the US and Panama — making them unaffordable for many.
“Lack of oil, gas, and increased electricity consumption for cooking, combined with high summer temperatures and possible hurricanes — not even a good Mexican soap opera can paint a more dramatic picture,” said Jorge Pinon, a researcher at the University of Texas at Austin’s Energy Institute.
Solving Cuba’s energy crisis would require “three to five years” and up to US$8 billion, he said.
Faced with this grim prospect, Cubans are not optimistic.
“This is difficult,” Rodriguez said, as he set up his rustic television and a soap opera’s first images flickered to life before his family’s eyes. “The time will come when we will run out of ideas.”
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