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Commentary

Cuba Blacked Out: Memory and Present

October 28, 2024

My childhood memories have long nights of blackouts as a backdrop. My grandparents would take an armchair out to the doorway, seeking the breeze of the tropical night, often finding the bites of prolific mosquito populations. A piece of cardboard moved from one side to the other over my half-naked body.

Inside the house, the light of a candle circled the empty table and the silent household appliances as it gently meandered. With the rocking of the armchair, the sound of the crickets, the little fanning of my elders, the mysterious and intermittent light of the fireflies, my eyes closed.

The next day, the same. And the next, and the next. Cuba’s economy took a turn for the worse in the 1990s with the fall of the European socialist bloc. During that period, known as the Special Period, the economy shrank by up to 35%.

It was the decade when Cubans ate sweet potato bread (when flour disappeared), pumpkin pizzas, and chopped banana peels. There was a rise in diseases such as neuropathy and malnutrition.

The speeches of Fidel Castro, then alive, were about resistance. The tyranny was faltering, but the rise of Hugo Chavez and the Castro hypnosis on the Venezuelan military gave Castroism a breath of fresh air. The island began the largest extractive operation among Hispanic American nations. Havana was established as the metropolis of the very rich and impoverished Venezuela.

But the foreman's luck did not last long.

In April 2019, as another milestone in the Cuban energy and financial crisis loomed, dictator Miguel Díaz Canel warned that “the harshness of the moment required establishing very clear and defined priorities, so as not to return to the difficult moments of the Special Period.”

But, ultimately, Cuba returned to that peak of disaster. Speeches do not change reality. And Cuban reality is tied to a centralist system and to growing discontent over the repression that has left more than a thousand political prisoners.

Between the 18th and 20th of this month, three total blackouts of the Cuban National Electric System occurred in less than 72 hours, after weeks of a worsening energy crisis that has dragged on the island for several years.

Progressivism, which had promised progress, is taking Cuba back to the pre-industrial era. In practice, it is not progressivism, but “regressionism.”

Some Cubans claim that the current crisis the island is going through is even worse than that of the Special Period. During the 1990s, there was never a total blackout of the country. Some towns in eastern Cuba reported almost 100 hours without electricity.

The most serious collateral repercussions, perhaps, are the rotting of the few and very expensive refrigerated foods that thousands of Cubans had reserved for the next few days. The blackout could lead to widespread famine.

What better than these kinds of practical examples to explain to enthusiasts in the American media and politics that the Left will never be the answer to get out of a crisis, but is instead the cause of the debacle?

Thomas Sowell has pointed out that socialism has failed so much and in so many ways that only an intellectual could not see it. In Cuba, the old people say that no one learns from the mistakes of others.

While the island was in darkness, in several churches, such as the Marianao Methodist Church in Havana, neighbors could go to charge their cell phones to maintain communication. In turn, evangelicals were distributing aid to populations isolated by the passage of Hurricane Oscar.

Days after the general blackout on October 22, with units of the thermoelectric plants of the Matanzas and Artemisa provinces, floating plants, and diesel engines already in operation, only 30% of the inhabitants of Cuba were still without power, according to the Minister of Energy and Mines, Vicente de la O Levy.

The whole situation is a hot potato. The regime knows it and fears it. President Miguel Díaz-Canel, in an olive green suit, threatened those who protested with cacerolazos (banging pots and pans) in various towns in the country on national television.

Millions of Cubans are going out to the doorways again. This time not only to fan their children, as in the 1990s, but also to protest. The deep darkness is no longer only used for lamenting, but also to shout at the regime. The darkness of a drifting island is a curse and a refuge.



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