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The leader Miguel Díaz-Canel emphasized this Friday the need to ensure in Havana the availability of materials for food preparation from charcoal to firewood, a statement that highlights the collapse of the energy system and domestic gas supply in Cuba.
The phrase was uttered during the eleventh National Defense Day of 2026, in which the president of the National Defense Council participated in a territorial defense exercise in the Antonio Guiteras Defense Zone, in the municipality of East Havana.
Díaz-Canel was accompanied by the Army Corps Generals Álvaro López Miera and Lázaro Alberto Álvarez Casas, ministers of the Revolutionary Armed Forces and the Ministry of the Interior, respectively.
When discussing agricultural plans in East Havana—the largest municipality in the province—the leader emphasized the need to harness all potential, from food production to ensuring materials for cooking, as reported by the official website of the Cuban Presidency.
In May 2025, Díaz-Canel used exactly the same wording during a visit to the municipalities of Manicaragua and Cifuentes in Villa Clara, which reveals that the message has become a recurring slogan of the regime in response to the cooking fuel crisis.
That the head of state himself mentions coal and firewood as materials to be "guaranteed" implies that the government is planning for the population's survival with cooking methods reminiscent of a different era, due to the inability to use electric or gas stoves.
Cuba is experiencing in 2026 its worst energy crisis in decades, with a power generation deficit of around 2,040 megawatts against a demand of 3,000 megawatts.
The situation worsened since January 2026 when the supply of between 26,000 and 35,000 daily barrels of Venezuelan oil ceased, following the capture of Nicolás Maduro.
On March 19, a national blackout lasting 29 and a half hours was recorded —the sixth in 18 months— and on March 22, there was a fourth total blackout of the National Electric System in four months.
In that context, the president of the Municipal Defense Council of Habana del Este, Maikel Pérez Valdés, acknowledged that the water supply is the main issue in the municipality, whose service is "greatly reduced" due to the impact of the energy crisis.
Pérez Valdés reported that the municipality is implementing a program to power pumping stations with photovoltaic solar panels, with the aim of achieving, in his words, "sovereignty in the pumping of water that comes to us from the large conduits."
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