A Cuban identified as Karla Arelis, a resident of La Habana del Este, posted a video on Facebook this Wednesday showing how a box of chicken belonging to her neighbor spoiled due to the prolonged blackouts affecting Cuba, and how she and her community tried to salvage the meat by deboning it and grilling it to avoid waste.
The testimony states that the work began at five in the morning, the time when the woman says she got up hoping that the electricity would come.
“At 5 in the morning, I got up to charge the EcoFlow, the refrigerators, and to do everything that every woman does when the power comes back. It never did. The whole community was awake at that hour because people just can’t take it anymore,” recounted the neighbor in the video, which has garnered over 34,000 views.
Seeing that the whole box of chicken had spoiled, the woman decided to debone the meat, clean it with salt, and take it to the grill to share it with her neighbors.
"I'm deboning a box of chicken that went bad for the neighbor. I'm going to debone it, clean it up a bit, and then we'll head to the grill," he explained as he worked.
The situation led her to resume a practice she had sworn to abandon: "That thing I said I would never touch again, the charcoal... I hate it, but if it goes bad, we'll share it among us all."
The video also reflects the direct impact on children's nutrition. "All the food has gone to waste. The children are crying from hunger," said the woman, who added, "If we were millionaires... today we would eat chicken all day, and tomorrow we don't know what we will eat."
The Cuban in the video does not hide her exhaustion: "We can't take it anymore" , and she makes a direct appeal: "Those who control the electricity are ruining all the appliances. If you don't have it, don't turn it on. And if you do have it, do it properly."
The testimony comes a day after the fifth total blackout of the year, recorded on Tuesday, July 14, when the National Electric System completely collapsed.
In just eight days, three national blackouts occurred: on July 6, 10, and 14. The energy deficit reached a historic high of 2,341 MW on July 8, with only 935 MW available against a demand of 3,100 MW, and 106 distributed generation plants out of service.
The loss of food due to the lack of refrigeration is a direct and documented consequence of this crisis.
According to data from May 2026, 47.59% of Cuban households lost refrigerated food due to power outages, a figure that exceeds 80% in provinces such as Granma, Matanzas, Pinar del Río, and Sancti Spíritus. With temperatures reaching up to 38°C, perishable foods become unsafe in just two hours without electricity.
35% of Cuban families resort to coal or firewood for cooking —the so-called "zero option"— due to the lack of liquefied gas.
In some municipalities, the gas supply has been interrupted for three months. The price of charcoal reached 4,000 pesos in Sancti Spíritus, making cooking during blackouts an unattainable luxury for many.
The preexisting food scarcity worsens the situation: the Minister of Food Industry, Alberto López Díaz, admitted in March 2026 that chicken has not been distributed through the standardized basket throughout the year.
96.91% of the Cuban population lacks adequate access to food, and 33.9% of households report that a member went to bed hungry in the last 30 days.
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