A Cuban identified as Yanet Suárez shared a testimony about her daily life in Cuba this Wednesday on Facebook that summarizes, in a few lines, the exhaustion of many on the island: no electricity, no gas, no prospects, and cooking with charcoal.
"I never imagined that the future would find me cooking with charcoal, as if in a century I did not get to live.", wrote Suárez.
“It’s not just hunger,” he warns. “It’s the silence of a refrigerator without power, the absence of medications that were once routine, the cinema and theater turned into memories of another person.”
Suárez also alludes to the insecurity that permeates public life: "It is not being able to sit in a park without assessing the danger, nor watching television to avoid confirming that the country is sinking under the whims of others."
Despite working seven days a week, he claims that basic foods remain an unattainable luxury. “I work seven days a week and still, basic foods are a luxury. I survive without aspiration, without a plan, without that minimum faith needed to envision tomorrow. Because tomorrow never comes: only uncertainty arrives, along with the bitter drip of friends traveling, family members leaving, and those who die”, he confessed.
"I'm losing people like someone loses coins in a broken pocket," he lamented.
Suárez closed his post with a question he doesn't expect an answer to: "I don't know if this is living or just surviving. All I know is that every day I wake up with a lump in my throat and one question: how long will this last?"
Various Cubans shared their opinions. "It’s very hard, we no longer live, we survive," one user responded. Another wrote: "Everyone deserves to live with dignity, security, and the hope of a better tomorrow."
Cuba continues to experience blackouts with no solution in sight. This Wednesday, seven thermoelectric units were still out of service and the expected impact reached 1,920 MW. The day before, circuits in Havana and Holguín had accumulated over twenty consecutive hours without electricity.
The gas shortage worsens the situation: the state company CUPET suspended the national distribution of liquefied gas on September 28 due to depleted inventories. Charcoal has become a daily alternative, with prices reaching up to 5,000 Cuban pesos per bag or more.
At the end of October, Idaneris Aguirre, from Isla de la Juventud, used a nearly identical phrase to describe her situation. This past Wednesday, a psychologist from Pinar del Río pointed out that Cubans cook with charcoal “when they can afford it” and with firewood in other cases.
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