Residents of the 18-story buildings in Garzón, in Santiago de Cuba, have been without electricity for approximately 40 hours, according to a public complaint circulated this Sunday by journalist Yosmany Mayeta Labrada on his Facebook page Súbelo Mayeta.
A neighbor who lives on the 10th floor of the complex, whose identity was kept confidential at her request, described what the families in the area are going through as "inhumane."
According to their testimony, electricity arrived this Sunday around noon, but the supply lasted only about ten minutes: a failure occurred in the so-called "caballito," and by the time it was repaired, the approximately two-hour cycle that they were supposed to receive had already passed without the residents being able to take advantage of it.
The situation is especially serious due to the characteristics of these high-rise buildings. With the elevators out of service, residents are forced to climb up and down as many as 18 floors by stairs. Water also does not reach the upper floors, as its distribution depends on a pumping turbine that requires electricity to operate.
"The saddest thing is that we have had to go to the front street to gather water and climb between 9, 10, and 17 floors multiple times just to take a shower and cook. You wouldn't want to see how children as young as eight and six have had to carry water in small containers to help their mother and grandmother," commented a resident of the buildings.
"Here live elderly individuals, sick people, and children who cannot sleep at night. Everything in these buildings is more complicated. It brings tears to my eyes before God to see how the elderly and children have to climb all those stairs," reported the complainant.
The complex, named Centro Urbano Sierra Maestra and commonly known in Santiago de Cuba as the "18 Plantas de Garzón," consists of five 18-story towers located on Victoriano Garzón Avenue, between Pedrera and San Miguel. Built in the 1980s using the IMS system, a Yugoslav technology for prefabricated post-tensioned concrete designed with seismic-resistant features.
The towers came to accommodate around 2,000 people. The five buildings are named after episodes and locations associated with the guerrilla struggle in the Sierra Maestra: Turquino, La Plata, El Jigüe, Cinco Palmas, and Combate de Uvero.
The complaint is not an isolated case. Since June 16, the Electric Company of Santiago de Cuba reorganized power outages in nine residential blocks, with only one or two hours of service per day for each block. In July, residents of Veguita de Galo, also in Santiago, reported 26 consecutive days without electricity due to a transformer malfunction.
The pattern of prolonged blackouts in high-rise buildings has left similar traces in other provinces. In July, a 12-story building in Santa Clara was without light or water for more than 112 hours, facing the same electrical pumping issue. In the Garzón buildings themselves, that same month there were alerts about the dangers of smoke and toxic gases from cooking with charcoal due to the inability to use electric stoves.
The national situation is just as alarming. This Sunday, the National Electroenergetic System recorded only 1,010 MW of availability against a projected demand of 3,250 MW, with a maximum forecasted outage of 2,125 MW. Cuba has experienced seven complete collapses of the National Electric System so far in 2026.
Mayeta Labrada summarized the human aspect of the crisis like this: "It's one thing to talk about power outages from an office, and quite another to climb 18 floors in the dark, without an elevator, in the heat, and possibly without water, after dozens of hours without electricity." And she concluded her statement with a direct demand: "After 40 hours, they need much more than explanations: they need electricity."
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