In Cuba, a blackout no longer solely determines when a light bulb is turned on. It can also decide when to cook, do laundry, charge a phone, take a shower, rest, and even when a couple can have a moment of intimacy.
That is the everyday reality that Cuban writer Yasser Sosa Tamayo turned into a kind of "manual" for living on the island.
He, also an activist, shared his reflection this Thursday on : "There are countries where electricity powers the home. Here, sometimes, it decides when you can experience it," he wrote.
Sosa listed some of those routines conditioned by the availability of electricity: washing, cooking, charging the phone, or bathing; however, he took the reflection even further into the realm of intimacy.
"Because the Cuban, even when tired, even with an empty pocket, still has the desire to live. And also to make love," he noted.
The problem, he added, is trying to do it with temperatures above 30 °C, in a small room, without a fan, with a child sleeping nearby, and with the water that must be reserved for the next day.
“So even desire does its calculations”, he summarized.
For the writer, power outages affect much more than just appliances. A phone call, a visit, a movie, a conversation, a cold beer, or a night of intimacy can be postponed simply because there is no electricity.
"It may seem like little. But life is precisely made up of those things," he pointed out.
Her reflection highlights those small sacrifices that often go unnoticed in statistics: sleepless nights, rushed showers, uncelebrated birthdays, interrupted conversations, postponed plans, and emotional moments that must be put on hold.
"That doesn't appear in any statistics. But the body knows," he stated.
According to Sosa, the constant adaptation to scarcity forces Cubans to adjust "the dream, the hunger, the wallet, the desire, the plans," leading to a conclusion that summarizes the essence of his text: "we are learning to live with less life."
The writer clarified that he was not talking about luxuries, but about basic actions such as eating without having to calculate every expense, sleeping without enduring the heat, or spending time with a partner without having to worry about when the electricity will return.
"To have a Tuesday that is just a Tuesday," he wrote.
His reflection concludes with a question: "How much life can one leave for later before 'later' becomes a way of dying slowly?"
The argument aligns with recent testimonies on how the crisis has increasingly reduced everyday life to a series of calculations and survival strategies.
This Thursday, a Cuban estimated that the monthly expenses for a small family in Havana amount to over 200,000 pesos, which includes food, hygiene products, medicine, transportation, and services, but even this figure excludes several items.
And although it may seem unrelated to what Sosa describes, the constant concern for meeting basic needs also ultimately affects life as a couple, adding tension, exhaustion, and emotional strain to daily coexistence.
Furthermore, it is not the first time that Sosa uses scenes from everyday life to describe the impact of the crisis.
In July, he stated that the true "blackout" in Cuba was ceasing to ask whether the current conditions could be considered living, and he questioned the normalization of increasingly greater deprivations.
A month later, he revisited the topic and warned that power outages not only deprive people of electricity but also of hours of life, as they force individuals to spend a significant portion of the day fetching water, cooking, preserving food, or simply waiting for the return of power.
The impact of power outages is not limited to personal testimonies: a study published in Social Science & Medicine, based on an online survey conducted with 415 Cuban adults between July and November 2025, found a correlation between prolonged blackouts, disruptions to daily life, and very severe levels of stress, anxiety, and depression within the studied sample.
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