Living in Darkness: How Cuba’s Energy Crisis is Reshaping Daily Life in Santa Cruz del Norte

The Paradox of Power in an Oil Town

In Santa Cruz del Norte, a coastal Cuban town that sits alongside petroleum production facilities and hosts one of the country’s largest thermoelectric plants, the air is heavy with the acrid smell of sulfur—a constant reminder of the energy sources that surround the community. Yet despite being enveloped by these power-generating resources, residents find themselves trapped in a cruel paradox: living in darkness while energy production hums around them. The thermoelectric plant rumbles back to life periodically, but its electricity doesn’t illuminate the homes of those who live in its shadow. This troubling disconnect between energy production and access has become emblematic of Cuba’s deepening crisis, which has intensified following escalating tensions between the United States and Cuba, particularly after U.S. actions disrupted oil shipments from Venezuela. For the people of Santa Cruz del Norte, located just east of Havana, the situation has transformed from difficult to desperate, with daily blackouts forcing families to abandon modern cooking methods in favor of coal and firewood—luxuries that many can no longer afford.

The stark reality of this crisis is embodied in stories like that of Kenia Montoya, a 50-year-old mother who recently made the heartbreaking decision to rip the wooden door off her bathroom in the crumbling cinderblock home she shares with her children. The reason? She needed firewood to cook their meals. Now a faded purple sheet hangs where the door once stood, offering minimal privacy but representing the impossible choices families face daily. With only a handful of coal remaining in a small bag, Montoya faces an uncertain future, as supplies in the region have nearly vanished. “Things are getting worse for us now,” she explained with resignation. “They don’t supply us with petroleum. They don’t supply us with food. Where does that leave us, then?” Her question hangs in the air, unanswered, reflecting the anxiety gripping countless Cuban households as they wonder how they’ll manage when even their meager resources run out.

Political Tensions and Their Human Cost

The deteriorating situation in Cuba has been exacerbated by international political maneuvering, particularly U.S. President Donald Trump’s threats to impose tariffs on any country that sells or provides oil to Cuba. Trump’s stark assessment—”Well, it’s a failed nation now. And they’re not getting any money from Venezuela, and they’re not getting any money from anywhere”—may represent political posturing from Washington’s perspective, but for ordinary Cubans, these words translate into cold homes, dark nights, and empty cooking pots. Near the main entrance to Santa Cruz del Norte, a sprawling mural declares in bold capital letters: “NO ONE GIVES UP HERE. LONG LIVE A FREE CUBA.” The message reflects the resilience and defiant spirit that has characterized Cuban identity through decades of hardship, but beneath this proud facade, residents quietly wonder how much longer they can endure the mounting pressures of daily survival.

The island’s multifaceted crisis encompasses severe blackouts, soaring prices, and chronic shortages of basic goods, creating a perfect storm of deprivation that touches every aspect of life. Adding to the uncertainty, the Cuban government has remained silent regarding its oil reserves, offering no transparency about whether Russia or other nations might increase shipments to compensate for the disrupted Venezuelan supply that followed the U.S. attack and arrest of Venezuela’s president in early January. While Cuban officials recently celebrated a phone call with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, they shared no details about potential assistance. Mexico has pledged to send humanitarian aid, including food supplies, after Trump reportedly requested that the country suspend oil shipments to Cuba. For residents of Santa Cruz del Norte, these international negotiations feel distant and abstract compared to the immediate challenge of getting through each day. Sixty-seven-year-old Gladys Delgado voiced what many fear: “With all those tariffs they’re going to impose on countries, no oil will come in, and how are we going to live?” On a recent chilly afternoon, she had cracked open her front door for fresh air while sewing small, colorful rugs from clothing scraps—a side hustle necessitated by her monthly pension of just six dollars.

Improvisation and Innovation Born from Necessity

Throughout Cuba’s history, necessity has been the mother of invention, and the current crisis has only amplified the population’s legendary resourcefulness. Just a couple of houses from Delgado’s home, Minorkys Hoyos demonstrated this daily improvisation as she dropped cassava cubes into an old pot filled with water from a barrel, placing it over a tiny makeshift grill inside her home. “You live with what you have,” she explained matter-of-factly, noting that the cassava represented all the food available to her at that moment. The 53-year-old diabetic has watched her few rechargeable items that once illuminated her small, disheveled home break down one by one. In the resulting darkness, she began bumping into furniture and walls until a compassionate neighbor gifted her an improvised lantern constructed from fuel and a reused baby food jar. “When it’s dark, I don’t see,” she said simply, a statement that carries both literal and metaphorical weight about the uncertainty facing her community.

It was only late afternoon when Hoyos cooked, yet her home was already swallowed in darkness—a daily reality that begins earlier each day as winter approaches. Outside her home, two children sat on a dusty sidewalk, stacking dominoes one atop the other to see how high they could build before everything tumbled down—an innocent game that eerily mirrors the precarious balance their entire community attempts to maintain. For approximately three months, Santa Cruz del Norte had maintained electricity while most of Cuba suffered constant outages stemming from aging infrastructure and fuel shortages at power plants. Residents like Iván Amores remained cautiously hopeful during this period, fearful that celebrating their good fortune would jinx it and plunge them back into the darkness that characterized most of the previous year. Their fears proved prophetic when, just a week ago, the outages returned with a vengeance. “This used to be wonderful,” Amores recalled wistfully of his town during its brief period of reliable electricity. “Now, it’s truly torture.”

Amores now cooks for himself, his daughter, and young granddaughter using a tiny makeshift barbecue pit, purchasing pricier coal at three dollars per bag because it generates less smoke inside their tidy home—a health consideration that comes at a financial premium. He also invested in a single tube light built and sold by an enterprising Cuban man in another town—an invention that can be charged and even includes a USB port for charging phones or other small devices. These kinds of brilliant, bootstrap innovations represent the ingenuity Cubans have become internationally known for, born from decades of scarcity and isolation. However, even these modest technological adaptations remain financially out of reach for many residents, including 67-year-old Mariela Viel and her husband, who still cannot afford to add a bathroom to their cinderblock home with its dirt floor despite a lifetime of work.

Memories of Better Times and Present Struggles

Viel’s personal history reflects the dramatic transformation Cuba has undergone in recent decades. Growing up, she never experienced a blackout: “We were living well. We had food, money.” After working more than 40 years at the cafeteria of Cuba’s power company—ironically, the very institution now unable to provide consistent electricity—she receives a monthly pension of just eight dollars. “What can I afford? Nothing. Not even a package of chicken,” she said, her frustration evident. When power is available, she prepares rice and beans and listens to her favorite music: the classic sounds of Cuban big bands that evoke memories of more prosperous times. The contrast between her past and present circumstances illustrates how far living standards have fallen for ordinary Cubans, particularly the elderly who contributed their working lives to building the nation’s infrastructure and now find themselves abandoned by the systems they helped maintain.

Sitting outside on a recent afternoon, Viel watched neighbors walk briskly past carrying buckets of warmed-up water so their families could take showers during a cold snap that began in late January, when temperatures plummeted to record lows. In a town southeast of Santa Cruz del Norte, thermometers registered 32 degrees Fahrenheit (0 degrees Celsius)—unprecedented conditions for a tropical Caribbean nation whose infrastructure and population are utterly unprepared for such cold. The combination of freezing temperatures and no electricity for heating creates dangerous conditions, particularly for the elderly and very young. Yet even amid these hardships, the community continues to find moments of joy and reasons to celebrate, albeit with necessary adaptations to their new reality.

Finding Joy in the Darkness

Celebrations in Santa Cruz del Norte now begin much earlier than tradition dictates, with families learning to work around the constraints of unreliable electricity. One family recently organized a boy’s 15th birthday party—a milestone age celebrated throughout Latin America with special significance—starting mid-afternoon to take advantage of daylight hours. As evening approached, the young man and his friends opted to finish their celebration outdoors, dancing and laughing under the light of a big yellow moon that provided what the electrical grid could not. That same lunar glow illuminated another group of people nearby who had gathered to celebrate the 61st birthday of Olga Lilia Laurenti, dancing and singing outside next to a scooter that blasted music from its speakers, transforming the vehicle into an impromptu sound system.

When asked about her perspective on the crisis surrounding them, Laurenti paused her dancing to offer a philosophy shaped by years of navigating uncertainty: “I’m telling you, whatever’s meant to be, let it be, because we can’t stop it. You’re not going to waste part of your life on something that’s out of your control. If only we could do something, but what are we going to do? We can’t suffer. You need laughter, you need joy.” Her words capture the resilient spirit that has allowed Cubans to endure through decades of hardship—a determination to find happiness and human connection even when circumstances seem designed to crush hope. This insistence on celebration, on maintaining cultural traditions and social bonds despite material deprivation, represents a form of resistance against the grinding poverty and political failures that have created their current situation. As Santa Cruz del Norte’s residents face an uncertain future, surrounded by energy they cannot access and watching international powers negotiate their fate, they continue doing what humans have always done in times of crisis: supporting each other, adapting creatively, and insisting that darkness—whether literal or metaphorical—will not extinguish their fundamental humanity or their capacity for joy.