The director of the Base Business Unit for Territorial Dispatch in Holguín, Davielquis Cortina Cobas, publicly admitted this week that the provincial electrical strategy consists of leaving entire municipalities without electricity to keep supplied the circuits that power hospitals, communications, water supply, the headquarters of the Communist Party and the provincial Government, as well as the electric company itself.
Cortina appeared on the program En Primer Plano from the telecenter Telecristal and explained in technical detail that circuits 2 and 12 in the city of Holguín concentrate all the vital objectives of the province, such as the Clínico Quirúrgico, Pediatric, Military hospitals, the Vladimir I. Lenin, the General Staff, the Communist Party, the Government, the potable water wells, Etecsa, and the banks in the center.
According to the official, with just 10 to 15 megawatts distributed among those two circuits, the critical core is ensured, freeing up the remaining available capacity to rotate among the other circuits in the province.
The most revealing explanation came when he tried to justify why some circuits in the city of Holguín receive electricity more frequently than the rest of the province. In this regard, he acknowledged that keeping circuit 2 closed during the day is a decision based on performance, not an accidental emergency.
"As a company, as a firm, it doesn't generate business for us; it's more economical and more efficient to keep circuit 2 closed and use those 10 megawatts to reduce the impact or to lessen the impact on the other circuits," he acknowledged.
The director himself quantified the human cost of that logic. The circuits of Banes 4, Banes 5, and the municipality of Urbano Noris had accumulated 13 or 14 hours without electricity at the time of the interview, even though they could have received service since three in the afternoon.
The context in which this confession takes place is devastating. Cuba is currently facing a projected deficit of between 1,840 and 1,915 megawatts for the nighttime peak, with a supply of only 1,300 megawatts against a demand of 3,200 MW.
The official also confirmed that Cuba generates exclusively from domestic crude oil and associated gas. "We are not receiving any support from the international community, no fuel imports into the country."
The public reaction in the comments on the company's video on Facebook reflects a frustration that goes beyond a technical explanation.
"Come to Mayarí to see a municipality completely disconnected," wrote Hector Fuentes Rabaina.
Yanelis Guerrero, from Buenaventura in the municipality of Calixto García, reported "only two hours of power and up to 40 hours without power."
Naleynis Batancourt, from the Pueblo Nuevo neighborhood of the provincial capital, was more straightforward: "I have never seen that improvement; here we are only getting three hours of electricity a day, and it's at dawn. Today we have gone more than thirty hours without electricity."
Several neighbors also questioned the veracity of the official explanation. Daite García Almaguer stated: "Please don't tell so many lies; the circuits that consume the most in Holguín, 2 and 12, are now the lowest consumers, where all the private businesses are located."
Another resident, Tania Aguilera, warned that the situation could become unsustainable even for hospitals. "If they do not regulate the number of residential areas included in the prioritized circuits, the time will come when there will be nothing left for hospitals," she warned.
The electricity crisis has triggered protests in multiple Cuban cities, and the Cuban Conflict Observatory recorded 1,133 protests in April 2026, a 29.5% increase compared to the same month the previous year.
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