Chambas: A Cuban Town's Struggle with Power Outages and Soaring Food Prices

An expatriate Cuban recently returned to Chambas, a municipality in northern Ciego de Ávila, to celebrate her mother's 87th birthday. However, what she discovered upon her arrival was so distressing that she felt compelled to share it on Facebook. The town has been without television broadcasts for months, receives just an hour and a half of electricity daily, and faces food prices that nearly consume an entire pension.

Delma López Gutiérrez detailed a series of crises simultaneously affecting the town's approximately 36,000 residents, situated 65 kilometers northwest of the provincial capital. "For months now, there hasn't been any television signal, meaning the residents haven't been able to watch TV," she wrote.

The disruption of broadcasts in Chambas, along with Bolivia and Florencia, was acknowledged by Radiocuba and Televisión Avileña back in January 2026. They attributed the issue to a shortage of diesel fuel needed for the transmitters' generators, a problem that remains unresolved.

Communication and Power Woes Compound Hardships

The collapse of both mobile and landline communications adds to the community's struggles. "Even when there's electricity, you can't connect via Nauta, and data communication is available for just an hour a day, if at all," López Gutiérrez reported.

This digital breakdown is directly tied to the ongoing blackouts. ETECSA has warned that power cuts could render up to 47.5% of mobile base stations and 56.5% of telecommunications cabinets inoperative, with the infrastructure unable to withstand more than 24 hours without power.

Electricity, when available, is severely limited. López Gutiérrez describes it as extreme deprivation: "Electricity is on for an hour and a half in the morning and maybe another hour at night or early morning, but not every day. Some days, it's just 1.5 to 3 hours of power, period."

Surging Food Prices: A Dire Contrast

Ciego de Ávila has been one of the provinces hardest hit by the national energy crisis. In August, the provincial Electric Company admitted that some areas went over ten days without service due to damaged transformers and a lack of replacement parts, handling only 55 to 75 of over 100 daily reports. This Monday, the Electric Union estimated a mere 1,030 MW available against a national demand of 2,900 MW, covering just 36% of the country's needs.

With insufficient electricity, cooking becomes another challenge. Most Chambas residents turn to charcoal or wood, but during López Gutiérrez's rainy visit, even those were hard to find.

The most jarring aspect of her testimony is the food prices: "The prices of food and other essentials are shocking, making me worry about the many vulnerable people with salaries and pensions of 4,000 pesos in a town where 30 eggs cost 3,500."

This stark contrast—a 4,000-peso pension against a carton of eggs priced at 3,500—highlights an inflation rate that reached 42.66% year-over-year for food and non-alcoholic beverages as of September 2026.

Community Voices and a Call for Action

López Gutiérrez did not hide her frustration with those who have the power to effect change: "This is part of the pain; add to it the desperation, the hopelessness in the face of such calamity, and the outrage at the indifference of some entrepreneurs and officials in the face of such a dire reality."

Residents of Chambas echoed the grim situation. "It's sad what they're doing to our town and our people, who have no respite or solution," one user commented. Another added, "Our country's reality is sad and difficult today, and the worst part is, there's no end in sight."

López Gutiérrez concluded her account with a poignant statement: "Not only does the body die, but the soul too, and that hurts even more."