A Cuban mother residing on 5th Street, between B and Lindero, in the Havana municipality of San Miguel del Padrón, publicly reported that she has been without electricity for 17 days due to a malfunction in a transformer that the authorities refuse to repair, and she shared images of her young children sleeping on the sidewalk due to the unbearable conditions inside the home.
"Look at how the Electric Company has me: my children sleeping on the sidewalk because they haven't resolved the issue with the transformer," the woman wrote in her social media post, directed directly at the Electric Company of Havana.
The photographs show two children between the ages of two and five lying on a mattress placed on the concrete floor, in an outdoor nighttime setting, with stone walls in the background.
The mother reported more than two weeks of waiting without a response from the authorities and demanded harshly, "How long is this going to last, sir? This is a complete lack of respect. Enough with the abuse already."
Additionally, he claimed that they would have demanded 70 thousand pesos to resolve the transformer issue, and he accused that these devices might be for sale. These allegations reflect his account and have not been independently verified.
She closed her testimony with a phrase that encapsulates the desperation of thousands of Cuban families: "I am just a mother demanding a right that belongs to me for the sake of my children, who are the ones suffering."
The case is not isolated. San Miguel del Padrón has accumulated multiple transformer failures documented throughout 2026, with reports from various streets in the municipality during August and September. This Saturday, circuit H343 in the municipality recorded nearly seven hours of outage due to a generation deficit, in addition to local failures.
In July 2025, residents of the Diezmero neighborhood, also in San Miguel del Padrón, closed a street after five days without electricity due to a faulty transformer; only then did the Electric Company install a new one.
The pattern is repeated throughout the island. In Santiago de Cuba, residents of Veguita de Galo reported 26 consecutive days without power due to a transformer failure. In Camagüey, it was documented that people experienced up to 105 days without electricity due to issues with special transformers. In Artemisa, one resident reported eight days without light after the theft of the dielectric oil from her area’s transformer.
The theft of dielectric oil became a critical aggravating factor in the Cuban energy crisis in 2026: thieves drill into the equipment during power outages to drain the fluid and sell it on the black market as an alternative fuel, at prices ranging from 600 to over 1,000 pesos per liter, rendering transformers useless and prolonging local blackouts for weeks.
Nationally, Cuba has experienced at least seven widespread blackouts in the National Electric System so far in 2026, with generation deficits exceeding 60% of demand. This Saturday, a peak shortfall of 2,008 MW was forecasted across the country, with only 1,287 MW available against a projected demand of 3,300 MW.
In Havana, residents of Lawton, Santos Suárez, El Vedado, and other neighborhoods staged protests and potbanging over power outages lasting between 24 and 48 consecutive hours, in a capital that has been suffering from months of electrical collapse with no solution in sight.
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