While entire neighborhoods in Camagüey went days without electricity, provincial authorities held a cantata on Wednesday in honor of Fidel Castro at the historic Plaza de San Juan de Dios, as a conclusion to the official week "100 Years with Fidel."
The event, titled "Cantata Centenaria #FidelPorSiempre," brought together Camagüey artists who dedicated songs and music to the late leader as part of the centenary celebration of his birth—born on August 13, 1926, in Birán, Holguín.
The director of the Office of the Historian of Camagüey, José Rodríguez Barreras, recalled the speech that Castro delivered in that same square on May 11, 1973, when he called on the people to fight "like the glorious cavalry of Ignacio Agramonte."
The event had a particularly significant political component: combatants from the Ministry of the Interior who were in Venezuela when U.S. forces captured Nicolás Maduro on January 3, 2026, received recognition from the highest provincial authorities.
The diplomas, jointly issued by the Communist Party of Cuba and the Venezuelan government, honored the military "for their fulfillment of duty in the defense of sovereignty and the preservation of the life of President Nicolás Maduro Moros."
Among the honorees are Yordanis Tamayo Brizuela, First Chief Osmaris Morine Roche, Second Lieutenant Yeandris Vázquez Torres, and Major Yoendis González Ayala, among others.
The Cuban regime publicly acknowledged the death of 32 military personnel —members of the FAR and MININT— during the operation that resulted in Maduro's capture, marking the first official recognition of the Cuban military presence in Venezuela after years of denials.
The contrast between the official celebration and the everyday reality of the people of Camagüey could hardly be more striking. On that same day, the province reported 92 MW of impact due to a power generation deficit, according to the blackout report from August 15. The day before, the figure had reached 115 MW, and earlier in the month it had gone up to 134 MW.
Residents of the province have been reporting outages lasting over 10 consecutive days due to transformer breakdowns, and some communities have gone up to 105 days without service.
"They are going to leave us in the dark forever," summarized the complaint of residents from Camagüey gathered in early August.
At the national level, Cuba has experienced at least seven total collapses of the National Electric System in 2026 so far, two of which occurred in August —on the second and fourth— with a maximum deficit of 2,411 MW recorded on August fourth.
While the regime celebrated the centenary of its founder with hymns and diplomas, the structural electrical crisis plaguing the island—resulting from decades of disinvestment and mismanagement—continued to leave the homes of the very Cubans called to the square in darkness.
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