The Heartfelt Lament of a Cuban Poet: A Cry from the Dark

The Camagüey-born poet Alejandro Muñoz Aguilera recently shared a poignant poem on Facebook titled "My Neighborhood and Its Dawn," capturing the plight of his community enduring a staggering 13-day power outage.

This poem was not his first expression of frustration. On September 2, Muñoz Aguilera had already posted a detailed narrative about the initial eight days of darkness following a transformer explosion that plunged 32 homes into darkness. Local electrical company technicians, during their first inspection, confirmed the equipment failure and the absence of replacement parts: "We have to wait because there are no transformers, they're missing."

During their second visit, instead of providing the necessary equipment, they opted to reconnect the fuse cutout—known as the "little horse"—on the damaged transformer. Foreseeing the outcome, the poet recorded the second explosion on his phone.

The Powerless Plight Captured in Verse

In his recently published poem, the collective despair is vividly portrayed through stark imagery. The opening stanza uses a metaphor of death and sleeplessness: "The night is the sole frame / seen by the dead, / desert dunes / pile up in my bed. / My subconscious demands / with a stitched mouth / while tears knock / insistently at my door / to speak of the people / who are losing their minds."

Another stanza turns the struggle for daily survival into literary material: "Burning my certificates / I warm the soup. I bite / the rope, swallow, lose myself / in the light that surrenders." The poem concludes on a somber note: "Our children will mutate / into eyeless creatures / and our limping elders / may not see another dawn. / Our walls will become / a beast that wounds us. / And a Cuban will say: asere, / asere, no doubt remains / that when God sneezes / another neighborhood dies."

A Community's Cry for Help

In his prose denunciation, the poet highlighted the dire situation in the affected neighborhood, home to over 20 children and numerous elderly with severe health issues. "And here we are, without the 'little horse,' without a transformer, without power, and without hope, in a neighborhood where more than TWENTY (20) children live, [...] children who do not sleep, children I personally hear crying every night, swimming in sweat and besieged by mosquitoes," he wrote. He added: "the indifference, the neglect, and the negligence with which we are treated hurt."

This incident is part of a recurring pattern documented in Camagüey in recent months. Writer María Antonia Borroto Trujillo, a Doctor of Communication Sciences and member of the Cuban Union of Writers and Artists, reported 48 consecutive hours without power and the inability to file a formal complaint. Residents of La Virginia in Najasa reported week-long blackouts with electricity so unstable—it flickers over twenty times during the scheduled three hours—that it damages appliances.

The Broader Crisis Across Cuba

The national scope of the crisis is equally troubling. Minister of Energy and Mines, Vicente de la O Levy, confessed to the National Assembly in July that some communities have been without electricity for as long as 105 days, blaming the situation on outdated transformers that cannot be replaced. In August, the generation deficit exceeded 2,400 MW, and so far in 2026, the National Electrical System has experienced seven total collapses.