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A resident of the iconic building FOCSA, in El Vedado, reported this Tuesday that her area was without electricity for 23 hours and that, when the power returned, the light lasted only an hour and a few minutes. The testimony was shared on Facebook by Yulieta Hernández Díaz.
"Vedado, FOCSA, after 23 hours without electricity, the power lasted only an hour and a few minutes," wrote the resident on her profile, in a post that encapsulates the desperation of thousands of Havana residents caught in an unresolved electrical crisis.
The FOCSA, regarded as one of the seven wonders of Cuban civil engineering, is a completely electric building: elevators, kitchens, and water supply rely on electricity. This turns every prolonged blackout into a domestic emergency for its residents, who are left without basic services for hours.
El Vedado has become one of the most active centers of protest against power outages in Havana. On June 3, residents of 13 and M took to the streets with pot banging after being left without power since the previous day, with reports of police presence in the area.
On June 6 and 7, new protests were reported in El Vedado and other neighborhoods in Havana, including Regla, Guanabacoa, La Timba, Santos Suárez, El Cerro, Marianao, Plaza de la Revolución, and Old Havana. Residents from several of these neighborhoods reported having only two hours of electricity over the course of four days.
In mid-May, residents of Nuevo Vedado protested after 24 consecutive hours without electricity, and on May 17, similar protests occurred in Playa and El Vedado due to blackouts lasting up to 22 hours daily.
The backdrop is a national electricity crisis of historic proportions. According to data from the Electric Union (UNE), on June 9, Cuba had only 1,020 MW available against a demand of 3,000 MW, with a projected deficit of 1,980 MW during peak hours. The day before, the anticipated shortfall had been 2,045 MW.
The causes are structural: failures in thermoelectric plants, poor maintenance of an aging system, and lack of fuel. On June 9, 106 distributed generation plants were idle due to lack of fuel, accounting for a loss of 890 MW, with a total of 1,203 MW unavailable for that sole reason.
The worst deficit of the year was recorded on May 14, with 2,174 MW, which was equivalent to leaving 70% of the island without power simultaneously.
Since March 2026, El Vedado has experienced months of recurring potbanging in response to a crisis that the regime has neither been able to nor seems willing to resolve. The government's response has been the deployment of police in protest areas, without any structural measures to alleviate the energy collapse.
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