An elderly Cuban has gone viral on Facebook, where she expressed her outrage over the electricity crisis affecting the country: 23 consecutive hours without power, unable to cook and trapped in the unbearable heat.
The video was recorded by Juan Luis Vasallo Palomo at the request of the lady, his neighbor, who insisted that he film it. In a short time, it accumulated over 90,000 views, demonstrating that his report resonated with an exhausted population.
The woman, named Gina, questioned why the electricity is only available for a short time at night. "It's a deceit, a deceit what they are doing to us, because when we need it is during the day to cook something, if it comes," she said, with a mix of fatigue and anger.
The elderly woman also described a paradox that the regime does not resolve: electricity and water never coincide. "When they provide water, there's no electricity; when they provide electricity, there's no water," she questioned.
And he added a direct complaint: "That's an abuse against the people, because the rulers are living as they please. They have everything they want brought to their homes."
"They are killing us little by little," he concluded.
What Gina describes is not an isolated perception. The regime itself admitted that 2.7 million Cubans are affected in their access to water, while international organizations like the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) raise that figure to 3.5 million. One of the causes is the lack of electricity for pumping.
According to the official report from the Electric Union (UNE), on Tuesday the National Electro-Energetic System had only 1,223 MW available compared to a demand of 2,464 MW, resulting in a projected deficit of 1,831 MW during peak hours.
In September, at least 23 days recorded outages exceeding 2,000 MW, and Cuba has already experienced eight total nationwide blackouts in 2026, the latest on September 18, when the system completely collapsed.
Older adults are the ones who suffer the most from this crisis. Cuba is the most aging country in Latin America: more than 2.5 million people are 60 years old or older. With a minimum pension of 4,000 pesos—less than 10 dollars at the informal exchange rate—and without family support networks due to mass emigration, many Cuban seniors face old age in conditions of extreme vulnerability.
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