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A Cuban family shared on Facebook how they spent the night sleeping on the living room floor on their child's foam mattress, wrapped in a sheet, trying to escape the unbearable heat caused by the blackouts suffocating the island.
The video posted by Esperanza Rodríguez Rivera accumulated nearly six million views and summarizes in 22 seconds what millions of Cubans experience every night: the desperate search for a bit of coolness and rest amidst the darkness.
"Our nights are like this now, full of heat and unable to rest. Trying to find a way to at least get a few hours of sleep," Esperanza recounts in the video.
"We took the child's foam mattress and a sheet off the bed. Then we lay down to sleep on the living room floor," she explains, before describing the outcome: "And that's how we woke up, with many aches in our backs and having not been able to rest well. Who else is like us?"
In a second post, the same woman is photographed with her young son —around four to six years old— under a white mosquito net, describing the night as exhausting but expressing gratitude for "being together."
"Sometimes you have to adapt, find the coolest corner of the house, and move forward with the best possible attitude," she wrote.
The testimony is not an isolated case. According to the report from Unión Eléctrica last Friday, the system only had 1,000 MW available compared to a demand of 2,630 MW in the morning, resulting in a shortfall of 1,590 MW.
During the peak nighttime hours, a deficit of between 1,960 and 1,990 MW was forecasted, which means that more than 60% of the country is left without electricity during the hottest hours.
On Thursday, there was an impact due to a deficit lasting 24 full hours, peaking at 1,874 MW without service at 21:00.
In June, temperatures in Cuba range between 24 °C and 31 °C with high humidity, making nights without a fan or air conditioning practically unbearable.
The case of Esperanza represents a widespread reality. Last Wednesday, a Cuban mother identified as "Lety Lety" recounted experiencing over 30 hours without electricity watching her children suffer from the heat.
And on Friday, a report asked how Cubans manage to sleep through 40 hours of blackout, highlighting that these nighttime survival strategies have become routine.
Since 2024, Cubans have resorted to taking mattresses out to porches and patios, using mosquito nets in response to the proliferation of insects, and improvising battery-operated fans or using ice to survive the nights without electricity.
The crisis has structural causes: aging thermoelectric infrastructure, lack of fuel, and insufficient maintenance, a result of 67 years of communist dictatorship that have led the energy system to collapse.
On March 16, 2026, a nationwide blackout was recorded that lasted 29 hours and 29 minutes, marking one of seven total system collapses in 18 months.
The regime itself, through the Minister of Energy and Mines, admitted in December 2025 that blackouts would continue in 2026, describing the year as "difficult." A promise that, night after night, the Cuban people keep by sleeping on the floor.
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