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Residents of Calle 72 in Güines, a municipality in Mayabeque, have been without electricity for over a week and report that the repair attempts have been a nightmare of improvisations, poorly executed work, and a bureaucracy that does not even authorize testing if the circuit works.
The problem began with the explosion of a transformer in front of the Nucay rum factory, which left the neighborhood in darkness. After three failed repair attempts, the technicians declared that the equipment was beyond repair. To summarize the Cuban reality, it informally circulated that by paying 100,000 Cuban pesos, a replacement transformer could be "found."
Finally, this Thursday, technicians arrived to install new transformers that were brought in urgently. A neighbor who has kept direct contact with this outlet summed it up this way: "Like any work done under pressure and reluctantly, they installed them without testing; they weren't even able to call and say to turn on the power for a moment to test."
When trying to energize the circuit, the result was immediate. "Today (Friday), as soon as they went to put in the switch to turn on the power, there was an explosion again, with sparks flying and everything, the poor quality of work in this country," the neighbor described.
Her husband was close to the technicians and heard how they complained about having been sent reluctantly after media pressure alerted them to the problem. The response, however, was late and incomplete.
The negligence of the procedure was evident: "They should have tested it to know that the work they had done was correct. They didn't test it, they just finished putting in the last cable... got in the car and left," the local resident describes.
When the workers returned after the new explosion, they remained idle. "The truck has arrived, and they are just standing there doing nothing because they have to wait for the director to tell them what to do," reported a neighbor. The atmosphere grew tense when several residents demanded explanations, and a worker inside the vehicle "expressed herself poorly." After another failed attempt, the final blow came: "The province does not authorize turning on the power for testing because this circuit has already received all the electricity it was supposed to this morning: three hours."
The neighborhood's fear is that the new transformers will be damaged and that they will go several days without the scraps of electricity they usually provide. "The concern of everyone here is that they will let it go to waste with the cuts that the pole is making again," the local resident warned.
The case of Güines is not isolated. A young woman from Artemisa reported having gone more than five days without electricity following the explosion of a transformer in her neighborhood. In Guantánamo and Granma, between June 11 and 12, some circuits experienced outages lasting between 24 and 49 hours. Generation deficits above 2,000 MW have recurred in May and June. And officials are no longer even concerned about providing explanations to the population. More than thirty to forty hours without electricity have been reported by residents of Holguín and Pinar del Río, just to cite two examples.
The pattern reported in Güines — makeshift repairs, unmotivated workers, and electricity rationed in hourly quotas — is the daily experience of millions of Cubans, a direct consequence of the collapse of the national energy system after decades of state management.
The population, in many parts of the country, has responded to the burden of nearly permanent darkness with loud pot-banging protests. The regime's response has been to clamp down even more without offering alternative solutions.
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