SANTA CRUZ DEL NORTE, Cuba — The smell of sulfur hits hard in this coastal town that produces petroleum and is home to one of Cuba’s largest thermoelectric plants. Yet, even as the plant cranks back to life, residents remain in the dark, surrounded by energy sources they cannot use.
As tensions deepen between Cuba and the U.S. after it attacked Venezuela and disrupted oil shipments, so have the woes of Santa Cruz del Norte.
People in this town east of Havana are plunged into darkness daily and forced to cook with coal and firewood, but not everyone can afford this new reality.
Kenia Montoya said she recently ripped the wooden door off her bathroom in the crumbling cinderblock home that she shares with her children because she needed firewood, and they needed to eat.
“Things are getting worse for us now,” she said. “They don’t supply us with petroleum. They don’t supply us with food. Where does that leave us, then?”
A faded purple sheet now hangs over their bathroom. Nearby, only a handful of coal remains in a small bag.
The 50-year-old mother doesn’t know how she’ll cook once the coal runs out because supplies in the region have dwindled.
It’s one of many uncertainties gripping towns like this one across Cuba after U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to impose tariffs on any country that sells or provides oil to Cuba.
“Well, it’s a failed nation now,” Trump said this week. “And they’re not getting any money from Venezuela, and they’re not getting any money from anywhere.”
Near the main entrance to Santa Cruz del Norte, a sprawling mural is emblazoned with the following message in all caps: “NO ONE GIVES UP HERE. LONG LIVE A FREE CUBA.”
But people wonder how long they can hold out.
The island’s crisis is deepening: severe blackouts, soaring prices and a shortage of basic goods.
Meanwhile, the Cuban government remains mum over its oil reserves, offering no word on whether Russia or anyone else would increase their shipments after oil supplies from Venezuela were disrupted when the U.S. attacked and arrested its president in early January.
Cuban officials recently lauded a phone call they had with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, although they did not share details. Meanwhile, Mexico has pledged to send humanitarian aid, including food, after Trump said he asked that it suspend oil shipments to the island.
Many in Santa Cruz del Norte feel the worst is yet to come.
“With all those tariffs they’re going to impose on countries, no oil will come in, and how are we going to live?” said Gladys Delgado.
The 67-year-old had cracked open her front door on a recent chilly afternoon to get some fresh air as she sewed small, colorful rugs made of clothing scraps to make extra cash because her pension is only $6 a month.
A couple of houses down, Minorkys Hoyos dropped a handful of cassava cubes into an old pot she filled with water from a barrel and placed it over a tiny, makeshift grill inside her home.
“You live with what you have,” she said, noting she had no other food available at that moment.
The few rechargeable items that used to light her small, disheveled home have broken down, and she began to bump into things until a neighbor gifted her an improvised lantern made with fuel and a reused baby food jar.
“When it’s dark, I don’t see,” said the 53-year-old diabetic.
It was late afternoon as she cooked, but her home was already dark.
Outside, two children sat on a dusty sidewalk. They stacked dominoes one atop the other to see how high they could go before the whole thing tumbled down.
For the past three months, Santa Cruz del Norte had electricity while most of Cuba was hit with constant outages stemming from aging infrastructure and fuel shortages at power plants.
People like Iván Amores were wary of rejoicing, fearful they would be plunged into the dark again like most of last year. Their fears materialized a week ago, when the outages hit again.
“This used to be wonderful,” he recalled of his town when it had electricity. “Now, it’s truly torture.”
He uses a tiny, makeshift barbecue pit to cook for himself, his daughter and young granddaughter, buying pricier coal at $3 a bag because it generates less smoke inside their tidy home.
Amores also invested in a single tube light that a Cuban man in another town builds and sells; it can be charged and even comes with a USB port.
But even those kind of brilliant inventions Cubans are known for are out of reach for people like 67-year-old Mariela Viel; she and her husband still cannot afford to add a bathroom to their cinderblock home with a dirt floor.
Growing up, Viel said she never knew what a blackout was: “We were living well. We had food, money.”
She worked more than 40 years at the cafeteria of Cuba’s power company and now receives $8 a month in pension.
“What can I afford? Nothing. Not even a package of chicken,” she said.
When there’s power, she cooks rice and beans and listens to her favorite music: Cuban big bands.
Viel sat outside one recent afternoon, watching a couple neighbors walk briskly with buckets of warmed up water so their families could take showers during a cold snap that began in late January, with a record low of 32 degrees (0 degrees) recorded in a town southeast of Santa Cruz del Norte.
Celebrations also start earlier now, with one family organizing a boy’s 15th birthday — a milestone age across Latin America — mid-afternoon before he and his friends opted to finish partying outdoors under a big yellow moon.
It glowed on a group of people nearby who danced and sang outside next to a scooter blasting music from its speakers to celebrate the birthday of Olga Lilia Laurenti, now 61.
“I’m telling you, whatever’s meant to be, let it be, because we can’t stop it,” she said as she paused dancing.
“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.”
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