There are images of the reality of Cuba that hurt, but others simply tear the soul apart.
The photograph of a few-month-old baby sleeping in their cradle, with a head soaked in sweat and total darkness during a blackout, is one of those images that stays with you.
Arianna Fernández Tamayo posted on Facebook the original image along with an emotional and moving message: "To those of homeland and death, to those of resistance, resilience, and the utopia that lies on the horizon. I hope that before their time comes, they pay in this life for everything they are making a country suffer".
However, due to its symbolic significance, it quickly went viral. Elvis Lobato, who lives in exile, was .
He accompanied the photograph with a message that encapsulates the outrage caused by the scene: «Images that hurt while the leaders live with millions, and a suffering people that they imprison and suppress for shouting their rights, that is the true dictatorship....».
In the picture, the baby is lying on its side on a white sheet, arms close to the face, with the head noticeably damp. There is no light. No visible fan. Just the oppressive heat of the Cuban summer.
The comments under Lobato's post summarize it with a bluntness that no official report could match.
"That’s how every night is for us, the Cuban mothers," wrote Dayaneisy Medina.
"What we have to endure as mothers is beyond words, God, how much longer will this last?" said Misleidis Alarcón.
"Last night was incredibly hot; what we went through was overwhelming, we can't take it anymore," added NMary Escalserra.
Some comments reflect the desperate ingenuity of those who have no other resources. "When I didn't have any rechargeable fan, I used to fan myself with a piece of cardboard; at least they could sleep without sweating so much," recounted Cheylin Medina.
Others point directly to the regime's responsibility. "It tears the soul apart, but they don't care," wrote Ofelia Martin.
"And they with the air at 17," Susana López joked, referring to the leaders who seem disconnected from the crisis.
"Behind every power outage and every day without water, there is a child who cannot sleep, an elder who suffers from the heat, a patient who depends on medical equipment, a mother who cannot cook, or a family that loses what little they had in their refrigerator," wrote Virgen Guadalupe in one of the most shared comments under the photo. A description that, in Cuba of 2026, is no longer a metaphor: it is the daily report of millions of families.
This photo should go around the world, requested Luis Ernesto Álvarez.
Babies and small children are the most vulnerable: they regulate their body temperature poorly and rely entirely on adults to stay hydrated and cool.
With temperatures hovering around 31-32°C during the day and barely dropping to 23°C at night, Cuban summer nights without electricity become a real threat to your health.
However, this is not the first time that blackouts have left this kind of testimony. A nine-month-old baby suffered burns while his family was cooking with charcoal during a blackout in Santiago de Cuba in June.
In May, a mother showed the body of her son covered in mosquito bites because she couldn't use nighttime ventilation, and the following month, children were sleeping on the porch of a building in Havana to escape the heat without electricity.
The image is not an isolated case: it represents the most vulnerable face of the worst electrical crisis that Cuba has experienced in its recent history.
This summer of 2026, the National Electric System has collapsed at least five times, with three nationwide blackouts occurring just in July. On July 8, the absolute historical record of deficit was registered: 2,341 MW of simultaneous impact.
This Saturday, a partial outage left several western provinces without electricity, with only 757 MW available against a demand of over 3,200 MW, affecting around 4.5 million people.
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