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Cuba's electricity crisis
challenges Castro's government
Residents of Old Havana
play in the street, as they wait for a government
scheduled blackout to occur, in Havana,
Cuba. While occasional blackouts are common
every summer, Cubans say these are the most
frequent and longest of recent years.
By Anita Snow / Associated
Press. The
Detroit News, July 23, 2005.
HAVANA -- Several dozen government employees
arriving home from work milled for hours
outside their 20-story apartment building,
waiting for power to be restored so they
could take the elevator up and cook dinner.
Across town in a tiny, dilapidated apartment,
76-year-old Angela Vargas gasped as the
image of President Fidel Castro flickered
out and back on again on the television
screen -- a sign of the continued instability
in Cuba's aging electrical system.
Sweltering summer heat in the 90s, blackouts
of more than 12 hours and water shortages
have increasingly frayed Cubans' nerves,
challenging Castro's government as he prepares
for Tuesday's celebration marking the launch
of the Cuban revolution.
While occasional blackouts are common every
summer, Cubans say these are the most frequent
and longest of recent years.
"It's been unbearable," Vargas,
a slip of a woman in a purple synthetic
shift and plastic sandals, said Thursday
night. She nevertheless was relieved the
blackout scheduled late Thursday for her
neighborhood never came off.
"Amid the miscellaneous promises and
speeches of triumphs that cannot be demonstrated,
Cubans are losing patience," dissident
Manuel Cuesta Morua said this week. "Cuba
is annoyed."
While Havana residents said the situation
eased somewhat this week -- at least in
the capital where the celebration is being
held -- Cubans worry about the rest of July
and August, the year's hottest months.
And they hope for good news Tuesday, when
Castro is expected to address the nation.
"It would be good if he touched on
the theme," Liset Olivera said as she
sold mangos and guavas from weathered wooden
boxes at a farmers market near Havana Port.
"We hope the situation will resolve
itself," said Olivera, adding that
she and her young son have spent many sleepless
nights at their towering Soviet-style apartment
complex east of Havana.
"It won't take much more time,"
Castro said of the power problems when he
spoke Thursday night at the primary school
graduation of Elian Gonzalez, who returned
to Cuba from Miami five years ago after
a high-profile international custody battle.
"You can trust what I say," he
said.
In power for 46 years, the Cuban leader
who turns 79 next month has often appeared
on state television to discuss the power
crisis affecting the island's 11.2 million
citizens.
"Right when we are in the middle of
this electrical battle, this barbarian is
threatening the island!" Castro exclaimed
July 8 as Hurricane Dennis battered Cuba.
Cuesta Morua said a sign that patience
is wearing thin was last week's clash in
Old Havana between several dozen dissidents
and hundreds of government supporters who
shoved and shouted them down.
No injuries were reported, but at least
10 dissidents were detained as they commemorated
a deadly 1994 tugboat sinking. Government
supporters called the protest a "provocation."
Tempers flare in Cuba during hot summer
months, when adults have fidgety children
home from school with little to do. Folks
pass fitful nights with electric fans stilled
and go days without bathing because water
pumps cannot operate. Refrigerated food
spoils.
"You have to buy your food daily.
If you don't, it will spoil," said
25-year-old Carlos Fornel Jr., who lives
in Centro Havana, which has suffered blackouts
almost daily for two months.
Prolonged electricity and other utility
crises historically have had the potential
to provoke political problems.
During blackouts caused by severe economic
problems in August 1994, Havana saw unprecedented
rioting and a migration crisis in which
30,000 people set out to sea on rafts.
Minister of Basic Industries Marcos Portal
lost his job last year for not warning Cuba's
leadership about the risks of what they
called "an entirely preventable crisis."
Authorities explained then that sulfur-heavy
Cuban crude heavy had damaged machinery
at the key thermoelectrical plant in Matanzas
province, east of Havana.
A month of blackouts were scheduled then
and energy-saving factories shut.
By winter, the blackouts stopped, and in
the spring, Castro vowed the energy crisis
would ease before this summer and blackouts
would disappear altogether by the second
quarter of 2006.
"Everything's going well," Castro
said then.
But authorities resumed planned blackouts
in May, saying they were unavoidable because
of low generation caused by shortages of
parts and maintenance of aging plants.
Hurricane Dennis complicated matters, battering
the island's obsolete electrical system.
Cuba is now struggling to fix the problems
with the help of its ally Venezuela, which
recently approved $20 million in low-interest
financing to support a $93 million electricity
project and sent materials for hurricane
recovery.
Copyright © 2005. The
Detroit News.
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