Power blackout in Cuba

A chronicle from central Havana

     A problem in the Antonio Guiteras generating plant in the province of Matanzas caused a collapse of the Cuban national electricity system.  The event occurred at 11:00 a.m. on Friday, October 18. 

Life during the power outage

     In our small apartment in central Havana, we lost electricity at precisely the moment of the event in Matanzas.  I was working on my laptop, which I generally use for writing and internet connectivity.  Its battery charge lasted for four hours, so without laptop or connectivity, and not able to tolerate idleness, I turned to rereading the chapters on William Jennings Bryan, Theodore Roosevelt, and Woodrow Wilson in Richard Hofstadter’s The American Political Tradition.

     At the time of the electricity failure, our building was low on water.  The person responsible for turning on the pump that sends water from the basement cistern to the building and apartment water tanks did not fulfill this task at 8:30 or 9:00 a.m., as is expected.  So water for the day had not been supplied when the event occurred at 11:00.  Said pump, of course, needs electricity to function.  The building rumor mill was saying that the person in question was suffering from a hangover.

     We spent Friday afternoon and early evening without lights and low on water, but with tranquility.  However, at 10:00 p.m., one of the building residents, a drunkard according to the rumor mill, was in the street shouting and banging a pot.  She protested that the situation with the electricity service was intolerable, because she was unable to cook, and she has responsibilities toward grandchildren and an elderly mother.  She called upon the people to take to the street and join her in protest.

     Two or three persons in the building supported her from their apartments, with pot banging and the shouting of vulgarities.  But the support for her protest action was limited to the partial support of these two or three.  One man shouted from his apartment that she ought to be quiet.  Apparently, someone called the police, because after about a half hour of protest, approximately ten police and security agents arrived, most of them dressed in civilian clothes.  One of them spoke with her for an extended period, and the protest came to an end.  She was not arrested.  A couple of the agents remained near the building following the incident, observing for any further occurrence.  Calm was restored.

     Around midnight, there were more persons than normal sitting on steps in front of buildings, seeking relief from the heat inside the buildings, now without functioning fans.  They sustained vibrant and loud conversations, as is normal among Cubans, with topics apparently far removed from any protest considerations.  As is normal, many cars were passing in the street, a major thoroughfare connecting Old Havana to Central Havana and Vedado.  By 4:00 a.m., the street was empty of cars and people.  All was calm, silent, and dark.

     At 4:15 a.m., I checked my cell phone, looking for messages in the WhatsApp chat group of Cuban philosophers.  I found that various messages had been posted between 1:00 and 2:00 a.m., naming sections of the City of Havana where electricity services had been reestablished.  I found that it was reassuring to know that the process of reestablishment of electricity services in the city was underway.

     I sent a message to the chat group, thanking those who had sent the useful and reassuring information.  I also expressed my solidarity, writing that I am convinced, for various reasons, that Cuba is going to overcome the blockade without ending it.

     We spent Saturday without electricity.  The water in our apartment tanks was exhausted; we were drawing from two small water tanks on our balcony for reserve.  I began the day by chronicling the experience, using a notebook and ballpoint pen, a writing tool that I had used for years, before some people invented personal computers, laptops, and Internet, with enormous unanticipated consequences. 

     At midday, we saw a ship entering the Bay of Havana, from our east side apartment window.  It appeared possibly to be a small oil tanker, as had been announced by the Prime Minister on Thursday evening, before the electricity system collapsed.  It does take a couple of days, however, for the fuel to be transported from the port to electric generating plants. 

     I spent the afternoon reading a Spanish translation of essays by Xi Jinping, written from 2003 to 2007, when he was Party leader of the province of Zhejiang, China.  Written to Party cell leaders of the province, the essays reveal the foundations of the current thought of the Chinese head of state, who in my view, is the most important exceptional leader of the first quarter of the twenty-first century. 

     Olga Lidia spent Saturday afternoon conversing with the women of the building, one of whom informed her that the municipality of Playa in Havana was without natural gas as well as electricity.  Our cell phones by this time were without battery charge, so we were out of communication with the world, which freed us, at least temporarily, from any obligation to be informed and concerned about world events.  One of the women gave Olga Lidia a bag of noodles, enabling her to make Cuban-style chicken noodle soup. 

     At 6:00 p.m., Olga Lidia paid a young woman (the daughter of one of the participants in the short-lived protest of the evening before, he a former cop rumored to be a drunkard) to carry two buckets of water from the basement cistern to our fifth-floor apartment.  In addition, Olga Lidia and a female friend from the fourth floor carried to our apartment two buckets of water from the apartment that her friend shares with her ailing mother, where there is a large water container of reserve water. 

     Olga Lydia discussed with the women of the fifth floor the management of the distribution of the water, when the electricity is reestablished.  The women expressed the view that the pump should be turned on immediately when the electricity is reestablished, because it would be possible that electricity service would be again cut after a few hours, for the lack of available energy in the national system.  The husband of one of the women volunteered to start the water pump as soon as service is restored, even if it were to occur in the middle of the night.  He has a key to the basement, because he keeps his bicycle there, and he regularly enters the area of the cistern to take his bicycle to work in the early morning hours.  He has started the water pump on various occasions before.  He promised to start the water pump as soon as electricity is reestablished, regardless of the hour.

     By 7:00 p.m., traffic and pedestrian patterns were normal for a Saturday, in spite of the absence of light.  A group of tourists passed by in four luxury American convertible cars, a favorite activity of international tourists to Havana.  As is known, these cars were imported from the United States in the 1950s as part of the importation of luxury items, to the detriment of goods necessary for the population.  As also is known, this distortion of importation was canceled by Fidel.

     Darkness set in at 7:30, and we could see from our balcony that many of the neighborhoods to the south and east had reestablished electricity services.

     By 9:00 p.m., the air was filled with the noises of music and partying, as the youth in the area had converted Saturday night without lights as an occasion for street fiestas. 

     At 9:00 p.m., Olga Lidia received a call from her niece, who lives in a zone of Havana where electricity was reestablished.  She informed us that Cuban television news is reporting that the reestablishment of electricity is proceeding.  The process is slow, because many of the circuits are old.  It was anticipated that the city would have service reestablished by late Saturday night or early Sunday morning.

     Olga Lidia’s niece also informed us of two hurricanes in the area.  One (Oscar) is approaching eastern Cuba, on the other end of the island.  The other is to the west headed toward central Mexico.  The tailwinds of the latter are provoking winds, overcast skies, and intermittent rains in Havana. 

     At 10:30 p.m., the lights in the neighborhoods to the south and the east went out.  My initial thought was that there was a technical failure in the process of the reestablishment of service.  But Olga Lidia believed that the service was deliberately cut to conserve energy, because it is likely that the system continues to have energy deficits.  She believes that as long as the energy deficits continue, electricity in many areas will be available for only a few hours before being cut.  Those few hours, she reasoned, would provide time for the distribution of water to building and apartment tanks, the preservation of frozen and refrigerated foods, and the recharging of cell phones, laptops, and other battery run devices.  So diligence and attentiveness are required, she stressed.  (I should note that Olga Lidia is a graduate in metallurgical engineering and a member of the Communist Party of Cuba; and she has a good head for practical matters). 

     Following the 10:30 p.m. cut in service to the previously restored zones, we could hear pot banging in the distance.  However, these pot banging protests appeared to be intermittent and isolated, and they were not able to generate a sustained and unified pot banging protest action.  And there were no indications, from our vantage point, of persons taking the streets in protest. 

     The intermittent and isolated pot banging continued for thirty or forty-five minutes, except for one solitary pot banger near us, whose intermittent banging could be heard until nearly midnight.  By midnight, all was calm and dark, except for normal automobile traffic. 

     By 4:00 a.m., the automobile traffic had ceased.  The streets were completely quiet, and dark.

     Sunrise on Sunday morning was at 7:30 a.m.  We remained without electricity.  We assessed our supply of drinking and bath water.  (Olga Lidia converts tank water into drinking water by boiling a bucket of water for fifteen minutes or more, straining the boiled water through a cloth, and storing it in plastic bottles).  We also noted that our frozen goods have thawed.  We were hopeful that electricity service would be restored to the building, at least for a few hours, during the morning.  I should note that for health reasons, I am under doctor’s orders, the principal doctor being Olga Lidia, to drink plenty of water every day.   

     At 10:30 a.m. all is normal, albeit still without electricity service.  The streets are active with automobile traffic, including many big American cars from the 1950s, most of which are driven by owner-operators, and which function as collective taxis (shared by as many as five different customers) in the main thoroughfares of the city.  In addition, various international tourists can be seen.  The weather is sunny and windy, as a result of hurricane tailwinds. 

     I spent Sunday afternoon continuing to read Xi Jinping’s essays.  His teachings are exceptionally insightful.  Olga Lidia participated in a game of dominos with the neighbors.

     By Sunday afternoon, the neighbors had become agitated by the fact that all the surrounding areas in the City of Havana had their electricity service reestablished, at least on an intermittent basis, but our area has had continuous lack of service.  The neighbors considered it disrespectful toward the area and its residents. 

     I personally believe that there must be some technical explanation for the situation, because the government has no interest in leaving unattended a densely populated zone such as ours, where from frustration, or due to stimulation by the enemies of the Revolution, protests could emerge.  At the same time, I was aware that the people in the zone are left without precise information concerning what is happening in the zone, and this is a situation that causes anxiety. 

     When darkness fell on Sunday, it could be seen from our balcony that nearly the entire city was without electricity.  But most of the areas of Havana had had services reestablished for at least a period of time.  Our area, however, had been without electricity for sixty consecutive hours, as of 11:00 p.m. Sunday.  We had begun cooking and sharing beef and chicken, to prevent it from going bad for lack of refrigeration.  Some were without water, and others with sufficient water were sharing what they had.   

     At 10:30 p.m., two persons in the area intermittently engaged in pot banging.  It failed to provoke a popular rebellion.  One of them lives across the street.  He was banging from his second-floor balcony, to the indifference of neighbors and passers-by.  Once again, the people in the zone, despite the frustrating unexplained extension of the blackout, were not interested in politically immature behavior. 

     By 4:00 a.m. Monday, it could be seen from our balcony that nearly the entirety of the city of Havana had reestablished electricity service.  But our immediate zone in Central Havana still did not have service.

     At 4:30, the lights in our apartment came on.  I could observe from the balcony that the reestablishment pertained only to our block, and not to the blocks of Central Havana to the east.  However, after two or three minutes, the service to our block collapsed, and we were again without lights. 

     At 9:00 a.m., our neighbor across the hall (a lawyer in management at the Metropolitan Bank and a member of the Party) informed Olga Lidia that the 4:30 a.m. startup had collapsed because the circuits or transformers had immediately failed.  They now are working on fixing this problem.  How long it takes to repair depends on what the exact source of the problem is.  It could take two hours, or it could take a week. 

     At 11:40 a.m., the lights to our apartment came on and stayed lit.  I could hear water filling in the apartment water tanks.  I connected the refrigerator.  After seventy-two continuous hours without electricity service, it appears that we may have at least a temporary respite.  Our water tanks were full again, and Olga Lidia threw a load of clothes in the dishwasher.  During the afternoon, the electricity service had two brief interruptions of less than ten minutes, but otherwise the electricity service in our apartment continued to function into the evening.

     I perhaps should leave it unsaid, but I feel that I ought to say that this chronicle has made evident the dignity and resilience of the Cuban people, who in times of challenge help one another, find solutions together, remember to laugh, and turn away from political immaturity.  This was the message of an editorial on Cuban television on Monday evening by Jorge Legañoa.

No one has their hands folded

     The ministers of the government, the provincial heads of government, and the Party leaders at the national and provincial levels have been working day and night to restore and expand the productive capacities of the nation, ruptured by the intensification of the blockade since 2019, imposed by Trump and maintained by Biden. 

     The economic plan of the government is solid.  It involves expanding domestic production through local management of production; establishing new international banking and financial links, replacing those that have been blocked or cancelled due to the intensification of the blockade; developing new partner companies, replacing those that have ceased relations with Cuba, under pressure from the United States; expanding trade relations with the nations of the Global South and East, including Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Mexico, among others. 

     The leadership is united behind the plan, and the leaders are convinced that through step-by-step implementation of the plan, the nation will prevail.  The people are less convinced, because most of the people are most impacted by daily realities.  The people are not necessarily prepared to analyze their concrete reality from a broader political, global, and historical perspective, even when such analyses are prominent in the political culture.  The people are dissatisfied with the material conditions, with insufficient internalization of explanations provided regularly by the government and the Party.  But the great majority of the people are inclined to patiently endure, with consciousness of the significant transformations and achievements of the Revolution, and out of respect for the Party.  They are not inclined to protest, except for a marginalized few. 

     No one should doubt that the principal cause of the current economic and energy situation in Cuba is the economic, commercial, and financial blockade of Cuba by the United States since 1960, a blockade that has been intensified since 2019 by new measures, including the full implementation of legislation enacted in the 1990s that was designed to block transactions involving banks and companies in third countries; and including the inclusion of Cuba on a spurious list of countries that supposedly sponsor terrorism, which makes many banks, companies, and potential investors nervous, for its potential legal implications. 

     We are currently in the midst of what some leaders of the Global South describe as World War III, in which various States with dynamic emerging economies have forged a worldwide process of anti-imperialist construction; and they are under economic, ideological, political, and in some cases, military attack by the Western powers, led by the United States.  When a country at war is bombed, no one thinks that the resulting hardships are a result of the failing economic policies of the attacked country.  All understand that the hardships are a direct result of the military attack.  The economic aggression against Cuba is less bloody, but it is real in its consequences.  It should be widely understood that the intensification of the blockade since 2019 is the reason for the power outage, and on these grounds, the USA should be viewed as responsible. 

     In an essay written in 2004, Xi Jinping, then director of the Communist Party of China in the province of Zhejiang, noted that since the province is small and without great natural resources, it has to develop its economy by “leaving Zhejiang,” that is, by utilizing the markets and resources outside the province.  It was a question of developing beneficial cooperative commercial relations with Shanghai and the regions of west and northeast China, as well as developing beneficial access to international markets.  This project of provincial development had the important advantage that it could count on the cooperation of other cities, provinces, and regions in the immense nation of China.  And the project was built on the foundation of the thirty-year process of the construction of modern China under Mao, which was possible to achieve with an inward-oriented economy, because of China’s immense territory and very large population. 

     Like the province of Zhejiang, Cuba is a small political territory.  Whereas Zhejiang could develop beneficial economic relations with cities and regions of a vast Chinese nation with a very large population, with a central government oriented to promoting mutually beneficial cooperation among the regions; Cuba has to reach beyond its borders to a neocolonial world system, with a declining hegemonic power, which is committed to preventing and breaking beneficial economic relations that Cuba has at present or potentially.  Under these conditions, economic growth will be very limited at best, and certain hardships will endure. 

     In spite of this, Cuba persists, and its capacity to endure is recognized by the peoples of the world.  I have always maintained that the key to her persistence is Cuba’s political system of people’s democracy, which enables sustained communication and mutual respect between the leadership and the people.  And as the above chronicle noted, another important factor is the dignity of the people.

People’s Democracy in Cuba: A vanguard political-economic system

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