A Cuban woman identified on TikTok as @gelylaflaki recorded a video from her home on Wednesday in which she desperately recounts having spent 27 consecutive hours without electricity or water, her face drenched in sweat and her backup devices already out of battery.
"Twenty-seven hours without electricity and without water, look at how my face is shining from the heat I'm feeling, because on top of everything, it's extremely hot, I'm all sweaty," says the woman at the beginning of the video, recorded with the little battery that was left on her phone.
The Cuban explains that both her portable EcoFlow power station and her rechargeable fan ran out during the blackout, leaving her with no resources to combat the heat with her daughters.
The scene is striking: a thawed picadillo as the only available food that day, a direct consequence of the refrigerator being out of order for over a day. "This picadillo is what I'm going to eat today, look at my life, thawed like this, all the meat is cold but defrosted," he points out.
What worsens his frustration is knowing that electricity does reach other parts of his area. "What do they care? I'm going to check out block five, which has a great kitty pon," he says ironically, highlighting the uneven distribution of supply that characterizes the Cuban electricity crisis.
The woman clarifies that she does not post the video to elicit compassion. “I share these things here, you know why, it’s not to evoke pity or anything like that; it’s because I need to vent,” she asserts. She even admits to the urge to go out and protest, but holds back thinking about her daughters: “What I want is to go out, but in the end, what will I accomplish? Leaving my daughters without a mom while I’m safe won’t solve anything.”
His description of the video sums everything up in one phrase: "We are living in a very hot hell."
The testimony of @gelylaflaki is framed within an ongoing electrical crisis in Cuba. This Thursday, the Electric Union reported a production capacity of only 950 MW against a demand of 2,570 MW, with a projected shortfall of 2,080 MW during peak hours. Of that deficit, 1,203 MW is directly attributed to a lack of fuel.
The figures on the ground are equally alarming. In Matanzas, there were outages lasting up to 85 consecutive hours between June 14 and 17; in Havana, blackouts exceed 20 hours daily; and in Santiago de Cuba, there are areas that receive only one or two hours of electricity per day. The heat exacerbates everything: Pinar del Río recorded 37.6 °C in La Palma, a local historical record for June.
The impact on the mental health of the population is documented. A study published in May 2026 in the journal Social Science & Medicine, based on 415 Cuban adults surveyed between July and November 2025, revealed that 55.4% suffer from extremely severe depression, 66% from severe anxiety, and 65.8% from extreme stress.
The viral testimonies of Cuban women using social media as an outlet have multiplied in recent weeks, from mothers losing pediatric medications due to power outages to families throwing away defrosted food. @gelylaflaki summarizes it in her own words: "Social media is what is helping me."
Filed under: