More than half the country is plunged into darkness practically every day for several hours. This is the reality Cubans must live with as a result of the economic strangulation the United States maintains on the island. In addition to the already common daily partial blackouts, there are now nationwide blackouts, which are becoming increasingly frequent. Last week, the entire island was plunged into darkness simultaneously on two occasions, bringing the total to seven total blackouts in the country in the last year and a half, while the population faces one of the worst supply crises in decades.

The low-intensity tension between continuity and change is experiencing a new and decisive episode in Cuba these days. The regime is rehearsing how to continue perpetuating itself without the Castros after 62 years. On the verge of turning 90 years old, Raul, mythical and disappeared Fidel's brother, will cede the presidency of the party to current Cuban president Miguel Diaz-Canel this weekend, during the eighth congress of the Communist Party. Díaz-Canel will turn 61 next Tuesday and will control all the levers of power and perpetuate Castroism. With the departure of Raúl Castro, and with him of all the old guard that still held the party together, the generation of those who did not lead the revolution definitively takes the reins. They will lead the controlled evolution of a socialism which, as has been happening in all the former countries of the communist bloc, has given way to private property. But in Cuba it has done so without great concessions, with exasperating timidity, and formally maintaining the ideological essences. The Caribbean country is one of those that has taken steps towards economic openness with the greatest reluctance, while it continues to define itself as a socialist state, with the Communist Party as "society's guide". Freedoms, despite the new Constitution, have not undergone any real improvement: they remain in quarantine. The party congress itself is held behind closed doors and without the presence of foreign media. Díaz-Canel, who was elected president in 2019 and who for the moment has two five-year terms ahead of him, now stands as the regime's sole factotum from his two sides: economically reforming technocrat, and faithful follower of the dictates of an authoritarian socialism, impervious to make any gesture towards dissent. There is no opposition possible.