Since the start of the year, when the US intervened in Venezuela, we have got used to sitting around and waiting for the lights to come on. The gaps between state updates have grown long – between six and twelve hours. We organise our life around being disorganised.

I just received a text from a friend, informing me that the SEN (National Electric System) is down – for the third time this month. The nationwide blackout, which has already lasted five hours, will at the very least drag on for a full day more. The grid is usually restored more quickly in Havana than in the rest of the country; I know people in Las Tunas and Guantánamo who have been sitting in the dark for up to 20 hours.

The absence of electricity drags everything else below with it. Water cannot be pumped into the tanks in most of the city’s buildings. Food spoils in fridges and the smell of rot seeps into homes. Cooking, already difficult, becomes nearly impossible. What ingredients can be prepared quickly? What doesn’t need to be refrigerated? Shall we roast that piece of pork that was meant for a special occasion? Shall we drink all the milk before it curdles in the heat? The lucky households have liquid gas. Others buy bags of charcoal.

Without fans, it is impossible to sleep though the Caribbean heat. Internet connections are unstable, or, in some regions, have ceased to exist. Private businesses open when they can – for half of the time, or sometimes not at all. The city begins to shutter around 7pm.

I checked the news, and looked at the Facebook pages of the electricity grid and some government-affiliated journalists to confirm that the SEN was going down again. I don’t know why, but I always have this strange feeling that the news might be fake, a hoax. Scepticism has become a default response in our society – the scepticism of a thousand unkept promises. But no, it was true. I swore under my breath.

I live with my family in an apartment in the Vedado neighbourhood. A minute ago, my mother returned home with a friend. They wanted to know if the news about the SEN was true. When I confirmed it was, they were annoyed but but not surprised.

It is strange how we Cubans have normalised our extreme living conditions, have learned to adapt to chaos, as if societal collapse were just a part of our daily routine. This is not to suggest we are masochists. It is rather that we have accepted that our government is useless, and that it is perfectly capable of committing one blunder after another without a single apology. We know very well that no solution will arise from demonstrating on the streets or asking for outside help. So we shrug and go on, which is better than being a prisoner to hope. This is one way of responding to a crisis, and as Cuba has long been in a state of crisis, normalisation has become part of our culture.

Every so often, word comes of new restrictions imposed by the American government – of delayed shipments or shipments that don’t arrive at all, of sanctions that make importing goods even more complicated. Our state media delivers these announcements in convoluted phrases, almost like political hieroglyphs, but there is no need for translation. We learn from the effects.

Queues for petrol have become longer; we are no longer sure if there’s anything to queue for. The government manages this problem in two ways. The majority of Cubans use an app called Ticket, set up in 2022, into which they enter their details, and then wait to be summoned to a petrol station. As the time of writing, the response time is nine months. But if your car is registered for tourist use, you might be able to fill your tank the same day. (Our government has a keen interest in obtaining foreign currency.) Black-market fuel, of poor quality and often diluted with water, is very expensive: rates hover around 5,000 pesos per litre, equivalent to more than $9 – far higher than in the US.

Prices are rising sharply across the board. Basic products that a few months ago were expensive are now simply inaccessible. The peso devalues with every purchase. A box of eggs, for example, could cost around 3,000 pesos – and the minimum monthly wage is 2,100 pesos. Some people buy eggs individually; previously, only carton sales were allowed.

Lately there has also been renewed attention from abroad: news articles and political analysis; a war of words between voices on the left and the right; a great many pamphlets and pamphleteers. There have even been symbolic attempts to provide support from outside via flotillas.

These efforts are surely well-intentioned. They must feel urgent for their participants, who want to oppose their own governments’ policies towards Cuba. From inside the country, however, they can seem remote. Decades of isolation and repression have left many Cubans indifferent to politics, or even suspicious. “Travellers”, Herberto Padilla’s 1971 poem about Westerners coming to witness the Revolution, still captures the situation well:

Their cameras – Nikon, Leica, Rolleiflex – gleam,
perfectly suited to the light of the tropics,
to underdevelopment.
Their notebooks lie open
for objective interrogations,
though, of course, they feel it a little illicit, partial –
the heart – because they love the guerrillas,
the struggle, life out in the open air,
and the strange Spanish of the natives.

In two or three weeks they already have
enough experience to write a book about the guerrillas,
about the Cuban character (or both),
and about the peculiar Spanish, somewhat brazen
yet exciting, of the Cubans… ¹

The present crisis is sometimes dated to last December, when the US navy surrounded Venezuela, after which US forces abducted Nicolás Maduro and announced sanctions against any country supplying Cuba with petrol – historically, the island has depended on access to cheap foreign oil. This account is not wrong: the latest blockade was without doubt the drop that made a brimming cup of want run over. But history did not begin with Donald Trump’s return to power. Blackouts, food and medical shortages – these have been going on for the past few years.

To begin to understand the political situation in Cuba, we need to go back at least to 2019, when the phrase “coyuntura” (“difficult situation”) was introduced to public life. Miguel Díaz-Canel, the recently installed president, announced this coyuntura in response to the tightening of American sanctions, which affected tourist flights and imports of petrol and certain raw materials, and restricted remittances from Cubans living in the US.

The Covid-19 pandemic, which followed almost immediately, knocked out tourism, our main economic pillar, in a single blow. For a time, the virus slowed the world and contained the perception of decline. But the problem did not go away – it was just buried. When the world began to reopen, our economic structure was no longer in a condition to respond as it might once have done. Most sources of foreign currency had vanished: tourism had declined, international medical missions had withdrawn, and Western Union had departed.

Yet it would be a mistake to view Cuba solely through the lens of American foreign policy – which has of course been unceasingly immoral, criminal and harmful. Our government must also take responsibility for the sufferings inflicted on its citizens. Consider the economic decisions it has taken since the coyuntura began. In 2021, as part of the so-called Tarea Ordenamiento (Ordering Task), the state implemented monetary unification – ending the complicated system of two currencies, one pegged to the US dollar – as well as adjusting prices and increasing public sector salaries. In the absence of other structural reforms, this inevitably resulted in sustained price increases without a corresponding improvement to real wages.

At the same time, basic goods were funnelled towards markets and shops that accept only foreign currency or Moneda Libremente Convertible (Freely Convertible Currency), a digital currency stored on government-issued cards purchased from the bank. MLC is itself a form of foreign exchange: credits can be loaded by relatives abroad or purchased at a fixed exchange rate. This new system further increased prices, and it also excluded an entire segment of the population from the economy.

Owning an MLC card became a mark of social distinction. Those who could not purchase one resigned themselves to watching the lucky few queue outside special shops and markets, disappear inside, and emerge with bags full of quality food, toiletries, oil and sweets that are not available anywhere else (except, at even higher prices, on the black market).

It was under these circumstances that Cuba witnessed its largest civilian protests since 1959. The J11 movement began in the town of San Antonio de los Baños on 11 June 2021 and quickly spread across the country. While protesters denounced inequality and authoritarianism, Díaz-Canel denounced them as foot soldiers of an American “soft coup” and issued a “combat order”, calling on loyalists to take the streets. More than 1,000 civilians were jailed, and one was killed.

In this sense, the coyuntura never ended – it just steadily worsened. Our energy policy has not helped either. After decades of a sustained lack of investment, predicated on importing cheap crude from allies, the transition to renewables occurred far too late. Faults became more frequent, work on thermoelectric plants was less effective, and the solutions increasingly provisional and slapdash. The result is what we are witnessing today: one blackout after another in an electrical system that is forever on the verge of breakdown.

When I think of the condition in which many Cubans live today, the word that comes to mind is despair. Despair not in a glib or flippant sense, but as a chronic condition, one that manifests itself in grand declarations as well as in something more intimate: in the fatalistic certainty that nothing will ever get better.

Healthcare has declined. Education has declined. Walking the street at night no longer brings peace – violent crime has increased. Beyond those facts, there is a persistent feeling: that our country is wasting away and making us waste away. You notice it in the way people speak about tomorrow – or rather, the way they avoid speaking about tomorrow.

Despair means functioning on autopilot, not knowing what day it is because every day is the same. Knowing that you will certainly never be able to buy a car, and that if you do secure a place to live, it’s because you inherited one. It’s a state of despondency in which no one has any expectations for the future and all hope has been extinguished.

Perhaps this sense of despair has its roots in our post-1959 history. For a long time, life in Cuba was sustained by a promise, by the idea that every sacrifice had a future meaning. There were moments when that promise appeared to be materialising, but as the years passed and the many crises came and went, that promissory structure slowly weakened, and the distance between what people had hoped for and what had come to pass became harder and harder to ignore. A generation waited and waited for socialism’s final brick to be laid, but socialism was always under construction.

When the internet arrived in the 2010s, many of the state’s lies were exposed. Cubans, especially the young, were getting to know other parts of the world – and wanting to escape. I feel a great deal of sorrow for the millions who still live on the island, but I will never forgive the dictatorship for making so many to leave. Between 2021 and 2024, Cuba experienced the greatest exodus of its entire history – more than two million people, by some estimates.

Families, partners and friends were separated. As for me – well, the dictatorship broke me. Sometimes I wonder, with despair, if I should have left the country when I had the opportunity. Maybe I stayed because I was hoping for a change that never arrived, or perhaps it was to look after my parents and grandmother – I know I could not bear to grieve at a distance if any of them died. Or maybe it’s because I never had the money to go to Nicaragua, or to pay for a degree in Spain. Or maybe I’m afraid of being a foreigner. These days, I try not to wonder. I have decided that my mental health is the most important thing.

On the night of the nationwide blackout, after dinner was prepared, I went out onto the street to try and relax. My devices were almost out of charge and I didn’t want to waste the little I had left. Carrying a lantern, I walked down Calle Línea towards the Malecón, passing several ideological posters. One enormous billboard showed Fidel Castro, his brother Raúl, and Díaz-Canel below the words “We are continuity”.

After walking for more than two hours, I heard the clang of pots and pans. People had gathered on street corners, holding empty vessels. The noise reminded me of a conga rhythm. A familiar habit given new meaning. Even protest had learnt to adapt, to find a rhythm within scarcity. Was it an expression of resistance, or of resignation? Of survival, or of acceptance? Perhaps all of the above. One thing is certain, however: when the pots and pans rang out, it felt, for a few moments, as if despair had vanished.

1. Poem translated by Paul Blackburn