Cubans are no strangers to hardship, after more than six decades of communist rule and U.S. hostility and embargo.
But the island has suffered nothing like what it is enduring now. The Trump administration cut off Cuba’s main oil supply this year, from Venezuela, after decapitating the Havana-friendly regime in Caracas. Drastic steps to conserve energy, including nationwide blackouts, only postponed the inevitable: Cuba’s oil reserves have run dry, the government said this week.
Scarce fuel and crumbling infrastructure have led to longer and longer blackouts; many people have electricity just an hour or two a day. There have been a smattering of small protests, including some where people have lit bonfires in the streets.
Cuba is sliding toward a preindustrial state of darkened cities and towns, where people rely on open flames and muscle to replace absent fuel and the machinery that sits idle.
Without reliable electricity or gas, many people have reverted to gathering wood and charcoal to make cooking fires outside.
Matanzas
Along streets that have grown eerily empty, gas stations have little or no fuel to offer.
Havana
Darkness envelops city streets normally illuminated by light spilling from apartment windows, storefronts and streetlamps.
Santiago de Cuba
Agricultural waste is cooked into charcoal, a fuel humans have made for thousands of years that is in rising demand in Cuba.
Palpite, Cienaga de Zapata
Makeshift outdoor kitchens, where people burn charcoal or scraps of wood, have been become commonplace.
Havana
Improvising with few resources is a longstanding habit for Cubans, like with a vendor this month whose old, battered car doubled as a banana shop at an open-air market.
Alamar, Havana province
Solar panels fill only a small part of Cuba’s need.
Havana
With fans and air-conditioners — a luxury item — stilled, people sleep on rooftops or take to the beach to escape the heat.
Havana
People line up at street markets to buy what staples they can afford, like rice; cooking it poses even more of a challenge.
Alamar, Havana province
Children blocked Boyeros Avenue in the capital on Thursday to protest the lack of electricity.
Havana
A state-run grocery store this month had neither many offerings, nor many customers.
Havana
During a blackout on Wednesday.
Havana
