Alexei Pérez Mesa, the culinary content creator known as "Cocina Con Ale" and with over 200,000 followers on Facebook, published what he described as "my most personal reel," in which he abandons recipes to pose a single question that, he says, encapsulates everything he feels: "How much longer?"
The video, lasting one minute and 36 seconds, opens with a powerful statement: "I believe that the happiness button for Cubans has gradually been switched off. With so many shortages and blackouts, being happy sometimes feels too difficult."
Pérez Mesa flatly rejects the idea that Cubans can find humor in their situation: "It's no joke to be without power for five days. And living with the constant fear of losing what little you have is not funny at all."
The young man describes in detail the daily burden of the crisis: he enthusiastically set up a small coffee station in his kitchen, dreaming of enjoying it and sharing it with friends, but today it sits "as a decoration, like so many other things I've bought with excitement for my kitchen that I can't enjoy afterward."
The contrast between the few moments of joy and the reality at home is described like this: "When I return home and encounter darkness, with the streets dim and so many tired faces along the way, I feel that happiness is left behind."
The video arrives at a time when the Cuban electrical crisis has experienced eight total collapses of the National Electric System in 2026, the latest on September 18, which left about nine million people without electricity.
Pérez Mesa also responds to those who accuse him of living in a "bubble" for publishing recipes while the country is sinking: "My recipes are not a way of pretending that things are fine. On the contrary, they have been my way of finding a little happiness in the midst of all this, of finding work, of continuing to dream."
Its wear is supported by concrete data: a study published last May found that 55.4% of the surveyed adults showed extremely severe depression, 66% severe anxiety, and 83% hopelessness or lack of motivation, effects directly linked to the energy crisis.
The influencer concludes their message with a statement that encapsulates the general frustration: “Cubans shouldn’t have to be strong all the time. We also deserve to live, not just to endure.”
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