A Cuban Mother's Nighttime Marathon with Just Three Hours of Power

In the municipality of Playa, Havana, a Cuban mother has shared on Facebook her exhausting nocturnal routine brought on by the ongoing power crisis. She receives electricity only between 3:00 and 7:00 in the morning, a mere three to four-hour window imposed by the Díaz-Canel regime during prime sleeping hours.

Evelyn Perera detailed in her post that "the new trend here in Playa for the past three days is getting power from 3:00 to 4:00 am until 6:00 or 7:00 am," summarizing the impact with a straightforward statement: "There’s no sleep. You have to get up and hustle."

Her account paints a picture of a domestic marathon conducted in the dead of night: turning on the air conditioning to cool the house, if only briefly, charging all devices, preparing juices for her children, brewing coffee, and freezing bottles of water.

Even toasting bread found its way onto the list. "Toasting the two rolls I had left because they were harder than the country's situation," Perera wrote, using irony to capture the sentiment of millions of Cubans.

Washing clothes was left out of the equation: for that, she would need to go to her mother’s house, leaving her daughter asleep alone. "Another day without washing," she noted.

From her window, Perera observed that the neighboring block remained shrouded in darkness while others arrived at her building with chargers in hand. Some stood outside with cardboard and fans, swatting at mosquitoes.

"I saw people waiting for transportation to work, while others wandered like zombies, hopeless, lifeless," she described.

Once her tasks were complete, Perera chose not to return to bed. The rationale was both logical and frustrating: "Sleeping for ten minutes and feeling it go off again is torture." She knew that as daylight approached, the power would vanish until the following night.

Perera concluded her post with a phrase encapsulating the resignation of an entire populace: "Here I am. Sleepless. Fully aware that once they cut it now, we won't see it again until tomorrow... once more between 2 and 3 in the morning."

Perera's story isn't unique. Other Cuban women have chronicled this daily collapse on social media.

Dayana Garcia garnered nearly 18,000 reactions with her comment, "We hold the Guinness record for enduring," while Mileydis González wrote that she no longer recalls the last time she ate with electricity or rested without fearing another blackout.

The backdrop is Cuba's worst power crisis in decades. On June 25, the national power deficit hit a historic high of 2,208 MW, with availability barely reaching 950 to 1,090 MW against a demand exceeding 3,000 MW.

In Havana, outages stretch beyond 30 hours daily; in areas like Matanzas, they've reached up to 85 consecutive hours. The Antonio Guiteras thermoelectric plant, the largest in the country, experienced its 15th breakdown of the year on June 15.

Playa, Perera's neighborhood, is a hotbed of protest in Havana. In March, authorities restored power after residents staged pot-banging protests and burned trash, which locals interpreted as a direct response to public pressure.

In May, fresh protests in Playa and El Vedado highlighted that residents were receiving only an hour of electricity a day.

The toll on mental health is scientifically documented: a study published in May 2026 in the journal Social Science & Medicine found that 55.4% of surveyed Cubans suffer from extremely severe depression, while 66% experience severe anxiety. No participant fell within normal parameters.