The Minister of Energy and Mines of Cuba, Vicente de la O Levy, acknowledged this Wednesday before the National Assembly that there are communities and population settlements that have gone as long as 105 consecutive days without electricity.
"There are communities, there are population settlements that have gone up to 105 days without electricity, because they have special transformers, because these are circuits with old voltages," said De la O Levy before the deputies, with a calmness that brutally contrasted with the humanitarian emergency he was describing.
In his statement, captured by the cameras of Canal Caribe, the minister admitted openly that the country is not receiving fuel and that there are no prospects for this to change.
The statements were made during the regular session of the Cuban parliament, convened to discuss a package of 176 economic reforms grouped into 23 axes—among them the authorization of private banking, the removal of the 100-worker limit for small and medium-sized enterprises, and the opening to foreign capital—while millions of Cubans survive without electricity, without water, and without prospects.
The minister attributed the prolonged outages to damage to old voltage transformers, which are very difficult to acquire in the international market, and to the systematic theft of dielectric oil.
"That theft of transformer oil that is happening daily, the amount of oil that has been stolen from us is almost similar to what we are producing in the same period that we are being robbed," he stated.
What De la O Levy failed to mention is that this theft is, in itself, a symptom of desperation: Cubans dismantling industrial infrastructure to survive or sell materials, destroying in the process the network that could restore their electricity.
Regarding fuel, the minister was equally blunt: «We do not have fuel and we do not foresee having fuel in the volumes that our economy needs».
He specified that the Cuban economy requires eight million tons of fuel per year, half of which is allocated for electricity generation, and concluded: “We are not receiving any fuel today, absolutely none.”
Before those who might think that the regime holds any reserves, De la O Levy was emphatic: "Some believe there is a little energy set aside to resolve something, but that is practically impossible, technically impossible. There is no energy to distribute."
The record of this minister is a catalog of broken promises and statements that downplay the suffering of the population.
In May 2024, he described the blackouts as "tolerable", while the eastern and central parts of the country were experiencing outages of up to 20 hours a day.
In September of that year, he promised that Cuba would have “at least one minute” of generation without imported fuel in 2025 — a promise that was never fulfilled — and acknowledged that the government's strategy for that summer had “failed”.
In July 2025, he admitted to the Assembly that the blackouts would continue. Last May, heacknowledged the "deep citizen discontent" and described the situation as "so acute, critical." However, this Thursday he decided to normalize an anomaly of such magnitude as populations in Cuba being without electricity for 105 days.
The numbers supporting the collapse back up every word. On July 24, the electrical impact nearly reached another historical record at 2,315 MW, close to the maximum of 2,341 MW recorded on July 8.
Throughout this month, the National Electric System experienced at least four total outages. In Matanzas, there were reported power cuts lasting over 87 consecutive hours; in Holguín, circuits went without electricity for up to 39 hours.
Amid all this, De la O Levy offered a solution in a phrase that summarizes the regime's powerlessness: "The path is long, it is sovereign, it is with the development of Cuban fuel, with national crude oil, and renewables".
And finally, for those who claim that the outages are not distributed fairly, the minister had another memorable response: «There is no inequality, there are mistakes».
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