No lights, no friends: Cuban youth grapple with loneliness

HAVANA, Cuba (AFP) — With frequent power cuts transforming Havana into a ghost town, young Cubans are struggling to get their kicks, many resorting to games of dominoes with strangers to pass the time. Most of 24-year-old Melanie Tejeda’s friends have left the USblockaded island nation, and only five of the 43 students who started an acting programme with her two years ago remain. She has started going alone to a bar called El Bujeco, where she chats with other dispirited youth looking to escape the blackouts in one of the few places with a generator adapted to run on natural gas.

“Those friends are gone,” Tejeda told AFP, explaining that many now live in Miami, Madrid or elsewhere. They use social media to keep in touch when the Internet connection and time difference allow, but a sense of isolation one day pushed Tejeda to sit down with a group of strangers huddled around a game of dominoes. “Dominoes is one of the cultural traditions that has endured, that still exists, and that keeps us united,” she said.

Young men play online video games using the Wi-Fi at El Bejuco bar in Havana, Cuba, on September 26, 2026. Bar Manager Yadier Delgado, 24, calls El Bujeco “a refuge for all the young people who still don’t know what to do with themselves”. Almost all of these places haven’t been able to stay open under these circumstances,” said Delgado.

Not even leisure has been spared by the US energy blockade imposed on Cuba in January, which has plunged the island into a seemingly endless crisis. On the second floor, 22-yearold Sian Dimitri Felipe and a friend battle it out over a video game. Felipe taught himself how to programme as a teenager and is developing his own game, although he acknowledges that working in Cuba throws up constant obstacles.

“Programming without electricity or an Internet connection is a problem...you can either come here to play or stay behind during a blackout, get bitten by mosquitoes, and catch dengue,” he said. He belongs to a generation too young to have experienced the vibrant cultural scene that teemed in Havana for decades. Many of the theatres, cinemas and concert halls that once pumped life into the capital have shuttered or drastically reduced their offerings.

Felipe recalls that until very recently, “there was a sense of community” among young people. But that “no longer exists”, he said, adding tha…