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La Isla de la Juventud, which until recently was considered the territory with the best electrical performance in Cuba, now operates with only six hours of electricity a day, acknowledged the general director of the Electric Union (UNE), Rubén Campos Olmo, on Wednesday during the official television program Mesa Redonda.
The deterioration has been progressive and documented. In June 2025, the local electricity company began implementing scheduled power outages of five hours, breaking with the historical reputation of the territory as a benchmark of stability in the country.
In February, the situation worsened. The local Electric Company announced the extension of the blackouts to cyclic four-hour cycles due to a lack of fuel, with the warning that "all circuits will increase by an additional hour."
On March 11, the broadcaster Ramón Leyva Morales, known as Carapachibey Piñero, reported in a video the real magnitude of the power outages.
"Here in the Isle of Youth, there are 18 hours of blackouts every day, and it has been like this for four weeks."
That same month, the local electric company enabled four charging stations in solar parks so that residents could charge their electronic devices, a measure that highlights the precarious situation that has arisen.
Campos Olmo acknowledged in the Mesa Redonda that the Isle of Youth was "perhaps the best territory in the country for electricity generation" before the executive orders signed by President Donald Trump on January 29 and May 1, respectively, which prohibit the entry of fuel and lubricants to Cuba.
"When this situation arises, the Island shifts to a generation regime of approximately six hours daily out of 24," confirmed the engineer, who described the impact of these measures on the electrical sector of this Caribbean country as "devastating."
At the national level, the executive orders left a fuel supply shortfall for a capacity equivalent to 1,300-1,400 MW, over 50% of what Cuba can generate at night, according to the official himself.
A Russian donation of 100,000 tons of crude oil that arrived in early April allowed for a temporary improvement. Beginning on April 17, distributed generation started to be used, and "the levels of impact dropped significantly," explained Campos Olmo. However, that improvement lasted just over two weeks.
"Already for several days we have been back to where we were before the arrival of that additional fuel," admitted the director of the UNE.
The crisis has also generated a wave of thefts of dielectric oil. Recently, one of the exemplary trials promoted by the regime took place, in which an electrical worker on the Isle of Youth was sentenced to eight years in prison for stealing 60 liters of the lubricant used by transformers, classified as sabotage under Ruling 475/2025 of the Supreme People's Tribunal.
Campos concluded his remarks with a statement that encapsulates the official position: "The primary cause of these disruptions is the inability to have fuel for the capabilities we have available," thereby sidestepping 67 years of mismanagement of the Cuban energy system as a structural factor in the crisis.
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