The worst energy crisis that Cuba has experienced in decades has forced thousands of families to reinvent their daily lives. Blackouts lasting almost the entire day, fuel shortages, difficulties in cooking, transporting food, or accessing water are part of a reality that citizens are facing by turning to their own solutions.
The situation of the crisis in Cuba reflects the ability of Cubans to adapt to increasingly adverse conditions while the State continues to provide no structural solutions.
A comprehensive report published on July 27 by The New York Times, prepared after a week of work by its journalists in Havana and other areas of the country, asserts that despite the pressure exerted by the Trump Administration on Cuba's oil imports, the island "manages to survive."
However, the examples gathered by the American newspaper show that this survival rests mainly on the ingenuity and effort of the population.
Among the cases mentioned by the newspaper is the increasing replacement of old American cars from the 1950s, which have high gasoline consumption, 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 that is accessible in certain areas of the country. All these initiatives have resulted in the creation of a kind of parallel energy network, driven by the citizens themselves to compensate for the lack of electricity and fuel shortages.
One of the testimonials featured by The New York Times is from Humberto Palmero, a 55-year-old farmer residing in Pinar del Río. After learning about the new restrictions on oil supply, he taught himself through YouTube videos to distill discarded plastic to produce gasoline and diesel in a homemade manner.
Thanks to that knowledge, the Cuban built a small facility in his backyard to produce fuel for his motorcycle and kitchen. "We seek solutions," Palmero stated.
Journalists also describe scenes that illustrate the deterioration of living conditions: families walking for hours to find water because the pumps have stopped working due to lack of diesel; women forced to cook with firewood in the middle of the street; refrigerators turned into mere cupboards due to power outages, and roads filled with people waiting for transportation after the reduction of bus services.
Beyond the American newspaper's conclusion 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 stem from new public policies or improvements in state infrastructure, but rather from citizens who are improvising alternatives to cope with a crisis that continues to impact their daily lives.
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