With Holguin’s May Romeria Festival over, Will the Extra Blackouts End?
HAVANA TIMES – The Holguin tradition known as the May Romerias has ended. It’s a practice that began here in the eighteenth century – 1790 to be exact – as a celebration of the Day of the Cross on May 3rd. According to the story, the tradition was started by the Franciscan Father Francisco Alegre (other sources claim his last name was de Alegria) to bring the rain to the very dry lands of the Holguin area. For this reason, the Bayado Hill later became known as the Knoll of the Cross.
The tradition was later banned like so many other religious practices in the country, until it was resumed by the Hermanos Sainz Association in 1993, this time as a cultural event. During the festival, there are book presentations, handicraft displays in the city center, lectures and poetry readings, concerts by singer-songwriters. It’s a time that definitely brings some cheer to the place.
But at present, there’s a serious inconvenience – the challenge of the blackouts. Maintaining these celebrations requires more energy than normal, and because of that, the population must make a sacrifice.
Specifically, the normal 6 hours of blackout are extended for an extra period that feels interminable. If they were supposed to turn the electricity back on at midnight on a given day, now you had to wait until 12:40 AM. On the nights that they didn’t turn it off, and you could sleep peacefully with the fan on until 6 in the morning, during this festival period they’d shut it off at 3 AM. And during the day you never knew when the electricity might come or go.
A customer of mine who works as a Russian teacher commented: “We Cubans have a lot of factors working against us, but three of them are basic: a poor diet, the blackouts that don’t allow us to sleep well, and the overly strong sun that must be endured.” I agree with him.
Given that, the happiness that the Romerias of May bring couldn’t be applauded as at other times, since they brought with them this inconvenient increase in the blackouts, which aren’t one of our least visible challenges. Now that the activities have finished, many people trust that not one extra minute of electricity will be taken away, not one extra minute of blackout will be endured.
Really, at this time of crisis that Cuba is going through, it’s very difficult to talk about festivities.