Havana in constant darkness: people now avoid the once-lively Lennon Park after nightfall

What happened

According to the state electricity company UNE, whose figures the state portal Cubadebate published on Monday, the national grid was short of power around the clock on Sunday. The gap peaked at 7:30 p.m. at 1,849 megawatts. For Monday evening UNE expected 1,030 megawatts of available capacity against peak demand of 2,900 megawatts, leaving almost two thirds of demand unmet. Several units at the Santa Cruz, Felton, Renté, Mariel and Nuevitas plants were broken down or under maintenance; solar parks delivered at most 543 megawatts during the day.

The power crisis feeds straight into the water supply, since more than 85 percent of pumping stations run on electricity. According to the water authority INRH, as quoted by the independent newspaper 14ymedio, more than 2.7 million people nationwide face supply problems. In Havana, a break in the main Cuenca Sur pipeline last week left more than 200,000 residents in three municipalities without water; after the repair it still took six to seven hours for service to return.

The mood on the ground

What this means day to day is captured in a 14ymedio report published on Monday from John Lennon Park in the Vedado district. The square with the bronze statue of the Beatle was long a lively meeting point. On a Sunday shortly before 7 p.m., the reporter found only a handful of people there, mostly older residents trying to get online via the public internet. Because power is cut for hours, the park often sits in darkness, and visitors and neighbours link that directly to a rise in thefts.

A well-known film critic who heads the Cinemateca de Cuba had his phone stolen there last week in broad daylight; police reportedly told him 15 other thefts had been reported that same day. An older woman had her cloth bag slit open at the farmers' market next to the park and only noticed at home. As dusk falls, the paper writes, fewer and fewer people dare to stay.

Habaneros are also improvising when it comes to water. In the Luyanó neighbourhood, 14ymedio reports, residents went more than ten days without running water and collected rain from their roofs in buckets and tanks during a downpour: not drinkable, but usable for cleaning, laundry and flushing. Those who can afford it order a tanker truck: in September, 1,000 litres cost between 10,000 and 15,000 pesos in Havana.

How differently the crisis is interpreted showed on the same day. The Communist Party newspaper Granma, reporting on an idle surgical-glove factory in Las Tunas, blamed the US embargo alone, saying it aims to suffocate the people. 14ymedio countered that the article ignored Cuba's dependence on imports and its unpaid bills with foreign suppliers. While state media report the power gap soberly in megawatts, the independent press describes empty squares and buckets under the gutter.

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