The worst energy crisis that Cuba has experienced in decades has forced thousands of families to reinvent their daily lives. Power outages lasting almost all day, fuel shortages, difficulties in acquiring, cooking, and preserving food, or accessing water are part of a reality that citizens confront by turning to homegrown solutions.
The situation of the crisis in Cuba reflects the capacity of Cubans to adapt to increasingly adverse conditions while the Government continues to provide no structural responses.
A comprehensive report published on July 27 by The New York Times, created after a week of work by its journalists in Havana and other areas of the country, claims that, despite the pressure exerted by the Donald Trump Administration on Cuba's oil imports, the island "manages to survive."
However, the examples gathered by the American newspaper show that this survival relies primarily on the ingenuity and effort of the population.
Among the cases cited by the newspaper is the increasing replacement of old American cars from the 1940s and 1950s, which consume a lot of gasoline, with electric motorcycles and mototaxis manufactured in China.
It also highlights the importation of lithium batteries to keep fans, televisions, and other equipment running during prolonged power outages, as well as the installation of solar panels in homes and even in some vehicles.
The report also mentions that numerous Cubans have improvised generators adapted to run on natural gas, a fuel accessible in certain areas of the country. All these initiatives have ultimately formed a kind of parallel energy network, driven by the citizens themselves to compensate for the lack of electricity and the scarcity of fuel.
One of the testimonials featured in The New York Times is from Humberto Palmero, a 55-year-old farmer living in Pinar del Río. After learning about the new restrictions on oil supply, he taught himself through YouTube videos to distill discarded plastic to obtain gasoline and diesel in a handcrafted manner.
Thanks to that knowledge, the Cuban built a small facility in his yard to produce fuel for his motorcycle and kitchen. "We look for solutions," Palmero stated.
Journalists also describe scenes that illustrate the deterioration of living conditions: families walking for hours to get water because the pumps have stopped working due to a lack of diesel; women forced to cook with firewood in the streets; refrigerators turned into mere cupboards due to power outages, and roads crowded with people waiting for transportation after the reduction of bus service.
Beyond the conclusion of the American newspaper that Cuba continues to resist, the report itself makes it clear that the main protagonist of that resistance is the Cuban people.
Most of the solutions described do not come from new public policies or improvements in state infrastructure, but rather from citizens who improvise alternatives to cope with a crisis that continues to define their daily lives.
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