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The town of Cantel, which is part of the municipality of Cárdenas in the province of Matanzas, has been completely without electricity for more than seven days, according to a complaint from user Christian Arbolaez, who amplified on social media the voices of those neighbors who are demanding a response that never arrives.
The blackout began last Sunday around two in the afternoon, presumably due to the explosion of a transformer at the Humberto Álvarez plant.
What angers residents the most is not just the darkness, but the institutional silence: "Not a single explanation. No one is taking responsibility. No one is providing any information," expressed desperate neighbors who claim to have reported the situation to various entities without receiving any response.
Among those most affected are the elderly, young children, sick individuals, and diabetics who need to refrigerate food and insulin.
Entire families have lost all the food they had stored due to a lack of refrigeration, and they also have no water, amidst heat described as unbearable.
“As a small town, they do whatever they want with us,” expressed an outraged resident in the post that spread the complaint.
The complaint was published by Christian Arbolaez on Facebook under the title "They forgot that Cantel exists!" and garnered over 1,200 reactions, highlighting the resonance of the plea among Cubans both inside and outside the Island.
The situation in Cantel is not an isolated case within the province. According to TV Yumurí, Matanzas is facing failures in transformers at least in four electrical substations: San Miguel de los Baños, Humberto Álvarez, Perico, and Los Arabos.
Kenny Cruz González, the technical director of the Provincial Electric Company of Matanzas, acknowledged the damages and noted that the possibility of consolidating the circuits of Humberto Álvarez and Cantel at the Santa Marta substation is being analyzed, although he warned that this could overload that transformer.
In Perico, the outage has lasted for eleven days, and efforts are being made to transport oil from Artemisa to bring in a replacement transformer, highlighting the structural precariousness of the system.
The situation is framed within the most severe energy crisis in Cuba's recent history: on May 11, the country reported a generation deficit of 1,955 MW, with a availability of only 1,245 MW compared to a demand of 3,200 MW.
Matanzas is one of the most affected provinces, experiencing power outages that in some municipalities last up to 20 hours daily, and where approximately 70% of ETECSA customers are impacted by the ongoing lack of electricity.
This is not the first time that Cárdenas has faced an extreme situation: in July 2024, the Electric Company of Matanzas had already announced blackout schedules of up to 384 hours per month —equivalent to 16 days without power— in blocks of the municipality.
Cuba has experienced at least seven total collapses of the National Electric System in the last 18 months, the most recent being on March 16, 2026, while small communities like Cantel are waiting in the dark for a solution that the regime does not seem in a hurry to provide.
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