A Cuban identified as Esperanza Rodríguez Rivera posted a video on Facebook showing how her family managed to sleep during a power outage lasting over 40 hours in Cuba, a scene that encapsulates the daily reality of millions of people on the island.
"This video is from when the power went out here in Cuba. 40 hours without electricity... This is how we tried to sleep when the blackout seemed to go on forever," Esperanza wrote in the description of the reel.
In the video, the Cuban explains step by step the solution her family found: taking the mattress from the bed to the living room, opening the windows for ventilation, and setting up an improvised mosquito net.
"Since we are in the room and there’s nowhere to hang the mosquito net, we have to be creative and use whatever comes to hand. So, in this case, we used some chairs to tie the other side of the mosquito net," he explains.
To avoid being completely in the dark, they turned to low-energy technology: "Here we hooked up a portable charger to turn on these LED lights, which consume the least amount of energy, so we can sleep without being totally in the dark."
The reason behind so much ingenuity is summed up by her at the beginning of the clip: "As you can understand, no one can sleep in this heat and with the mosquitoes."
In May, Matanzas experienced more than 40 hours of blackout, when the Antonio Guiteras thermoelectric plant went offline due to a boiler malfunction, resulting in a loss of 140 MW.
That breakdown worsened a crisis that was already structural: on May 14, the Electric Union projected a generation of only 976 MW against a demand of 3,150 MW, with a deficit of 2,174 MW that left nearly 70% of the island without service.
In Havana, power outages reached 24 consecutive hours, and the Minister of Energy himself acknowledged cuts of more than 22 hours daily.
The combination of factors that makes a night without electricity unbearable is threefold: temperatures exceeding 35°C, a complete lack of electrical ventilation, and the proliferation of mosquitoes encouraged by the stagnant water that accumulates when the water pumps fail.
The consequences extend far beyond mere rest: the blackouts have led to cancellation of surgeries in hospitals and disruption of the cold chain for medications, massive food loss due to lack of refrigeration, and reductions in working hours across the country.
On March 16, the National Electroenergy System experienced a total disconnection, the fourth major outage in just a few months, and the electrical deficits have consistently exceeded 1,900 MW throughout 2026.
The Cuban electricity crisis of 2024-2026 is considered the most severe in decades, and the resourcefulness of families like Esperanza's—using a mattress in the living room, chairs as support for a mosquito net, and a portable charger as the only source of light—has become the everyday response of a people who have been surviving in darkness for years.
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