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A Cuban from the Playa municipality in Havana described on Facebook the exhausting nightly ritual imposed by the electricity crisis: she receives electricity only between 3:00 and 7:00 in the morning, a window of just three to four hours that the Díaz-Canel regime schedules during her sleep hours.
Evelyn Perera recounted in her post that "the new trend here in Playa for the past three days is to turn on the electricity between 3:00 and 4:00 in the morning, until 6:00 or 7:00 am," and summed up the consequences with a straightforward phrase: "You can't sleep. You have to get up and run."
The narrative describes a domestic marathon in complete darkness: turning on the air conditioning to cool the home, even if just for a while, charging all the devices, making juices for the children, brewing coffee, and freezing bottles of water.
"Until toasting bread made it onto the list. 'Toast the two little breads I had left because they were harder than the country's situation,' wrote Perera, with an irony that captures the mood of millions of Cubans."
Washing clothes was off the table: for that, she would have to go to her mother's house, which meant leaving her daughter sleeping alone. "Another day without doing laundry," she noted.
From the window, Perera observed that the neighboring building remained completely dark while neighbors arrived with chargers in hand at the building where she lives. Others waited outside with cardboard boxes and fans, swatting at mosquitoes.
"Seeing people waiting for transportation to go to work, while others walked like zombies, without hope, without desire, without life," he described.
The author decided not to go back to bed once the tasks were finished. The reason is as logical as it is frustrating: "Falling asleep for ten minutes only to feel it getting taken away again is torture." She knew that by dawn, the current would vanish until the next morning.
Perera concluded her post with a phrase that captures the resignation of an entire population: "Here I am. Sleepless. Fully aware that, once they take it down now, we won't see it again until tomorrow... once again between 2 and 3 in the morning."
Perera's testimony is not an isolated case. Other Cuban women have documented the same daily collapse on social media.
Dayana Garcia accumulated nearly 18,000 reactions with her phrase «We hold the Guinness record for enduring», while Mileydis González wrote that she no longer remembers the last time she had electricity while eating or rested without worrying about another blackout.
The background is the worst electrical crisis in Cuba in decades. On June 25, the national electricity deficit reached a historic record of 2,208 MW, with availability barely between 950 and 1,090 MW against a demand that exceeded 3,000 MW.
In Havana, power outages exceed 30 hours a day; in areas of Matanzas, they have reached 85 consecutive hours. The Antonio Guiteras thermoelectric plant, the largest in the country, suffered its 15th breakdown of the year on June 15.
The Playa municipality, where Perera lives, is one of the main centers of protest in Havana. In March, authorities restored electricity in the area after noisy demonstrations with burning trash, which the neighbors interpreted as a direct concession to popular pressure.
In May, new protests with pots and pans in Playa and El Vedado reported that they were only receiving one hour of electricity a day.
The impact on mental health is scientifically documented: a study published in May 2026 in the journal Social Science & Medicine revealed that 55.4% of surveyed Cubans suffer from extremely severe depression and 66% from severe anxiety. No participants were classified within normal parameters.
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