A dark autumn. That is what Cuba has experienced in the past month. The continuous impact on citizens by weeks of blackouts and natural disaster has increased discontent among those who live on the island.

Cuba’s electrical system collapsed on October 18 due to the unexpected shutdown of the Antonio Guiteras thermoelectric plant (Matanzas province), one of the largest in the country.

The general blackout — preceded by others of up to 20 hours — psychologically affected millions of Cubans, not knowing if and when the service would be fully restored. Both citizens and leaders of ministries that offer humanitarian aid to vulnerable groups in society feared that the little food they had been able to gather would not be kept refrigerated and could be lost. This is what happened in some homes.

Seventy-two hours after the blackout, the category 1 hurricane Oscar made landfall in eastern Cuba, leaving heavy rains and seven dead, including a mother and her five-year-old son. The towns of Imías and San Antonio del Sur in Guantánamo province suffered the greatest impact with broken bridges, overflowing rivers, storm surges, and damage to infrastructure. Water poured into areas that are usually semi-desert, and entire families lost their belongings.

In San Antonio del Sur, residents fled in a stampede to higher areas after a rumor spread that a local dam was about to collapse. According to reports from an OAA partner on the ground, municipal authorities blamed Christians for spreading the information and promised various measures against the alleged culprits.

This was in line with the “exemplary” policy announced by President Miguel Díaz-Canel himself, following the increase in popular discontent. A Guantánamo resident confronted the dictator by telling him, “They left us alone.” The civil defense forces, which were elevated by Castro propaganda as an effective state institution, were not activated in several areas, possibly due to a combination of ineptitude and lack of resources due to the energy crisis.

On November 6, the disaster moved from eastern Cuba to the west. Another hurricane, Rafael, made landfall as a category 3 with sustained winds of up to 115 mph. It destroyed homes and affected crops in the already withered Cuban agriculture — compromising future fruit harvests, and destroying power lines, especially in the province of Artemisa. Entire families lost everything.

Some 220,000 people were evacuated by the authorities to shelters, or they evacuated themselves to neighbors’ houses with more resistant structures or at a higher altitude.

With the passage of Rafael, the island suffered a second nationwide blackout. To make matters worse, again in eastern Cuba, on November 10, two strong earthquakes shook the south of the island. The U.S. Geological Service recorded the first with a magnitude of 5.9 on the Richter scale, while the second, more powerful, reached 6.8, both about 25 miles off the coast of Bartolomé Masó, in the Granma Province.

Cracked streets, cracked houses and fallen walls were the main cause of the damage; in addition to a terrified local population, who remained in the streets for hours fearing that their homes would collapse. In that province, some 34,000 families live in flimsy houses with dirt floors.

During this dark autumn for the island of Cuba, two elements were constant and two conclusions can be drawn.

The first thing to mention is that the calamities were accompanied by citizen mobilization in protest against the poor living conditions on the island. The cacerolazos and street blockades were perhaps the most popular during the period. On the other hand, state repression followed the public displays of discontent.

The attorney general’s office confirmed on Saturday, November 9 that it had charged several Cubans in the provinces of Havana, Mayabeque, and Ciego de Ávila after protesting the lack of electricity on the third day of the national blackout after Hurricane Rafael. They were all charged with the nebulous crimes of attack, public disorder, and damage, and remain in provisional prison.

The second constant element was the help from civil society to the victims. The leadership of the well-oiled support network of evangelical groups reached every corner of the island. The link between the global church, like Pastor Dante Gebel’s River Church, and the believers on the island was key.

Local collections managed by each church were quickly activated, the almost constant caravans of trucks with food, clothing, and basic necessities and, finally, the use of the churches in the affected localities as storage and distribution centers. I have friends who, like me and many young people when we were in Cuba, are now on the road to volunteer to help.

Sources on the ground have confirmed that some caravans were stopped by agents who demanded that the load be distributed through state channels. Christians have continued to threaten the Castro monopoly on solidarity.

In the most affected areas, churches have been opened so that homeless people can spend the night there, religious leaders alternate between the pulpit and the work of rebuilding the precarious homes that fell in the harsh season.

The two most obvious conclusions of the whole disaster gravitate between the poles of citizenship and that of the regime.

The first has two faces: the incredible generosity of the Cuban people has been demonstrated, even in the midst of pressing needs, and the leadership and mobilizing capacity of Cuban Christians has been reaffirmed. The second presents the paradox of destruction as hope: the totalitarian state loses political capital due to the terrible handling of the energy crisis and that of natural phenomena. The regime is destroyed, and a new country will be born.

With God’s help, the constant protests and citizen discontent will demoralize the middle political and military leaders, and the path to change, from there, is almost irreversible.