A “brigade” of 180 workers makes the spare parts to keep it standing.
14ymedio, Havana, 7 May 2025 — In 1966, when the first two of the Antonio Maceo thermoelectric power plants were installed on the Renté peninsula in Santiago de Cuba, experts predicted a useful life of about 35 years. Today, with 59 years of operation and full of patches and rivets, the plant barely works thanks to the workers, who manufacture 80% of the parts that keep it standing.
In an article that applauds the “effort and sacrifice” of the 1,500 workers at Renté, the official press gave details on Monday about one of the main thermoelectric power plants in the country. The Antonio Maceo not only doubles its expected useful life, but generates just 258 megawatts (MW), half of the 500 that it delivered in the 1980s, when the Soviet subsidy still gave oxygen to the economy of the island.
Although it started with two generating units in its foundation, by its golden decade it already had six. Of these, two are now standing, and a third, unit 5, is mortally wounded, although the workers say they are trying to get it going. The other three, which are not mentioned in the press, are deactivated.
The problems to keep the plant afloat are the same as in the rest of the thermoelectric power plants in the country
The problems to keep the plant afloat are the same as in the rest of the country’s thermoelectric power plants: the absolute lack of resources, spare parts and the currency to obtain them. Hence, according to the general manager of the plant, Jesús Aguilar, the workers’ inventiveness is the “main strength” of the plant.
Although it is a demanding and dangerous job, the plant has employees as old as its parts. Arturo Laurence Richard, 82, is a genuine relic of the plant, where he has been working since the year it was set up: “The Renté has always been able to count on me, since 1966,” says the man who worked hand in hand with the Soviet engineers.
With units 3 and 6 more or less stable, the employees of the Antonio Maceo try to get the 5 out of its permanent breakdown. This Tuesday, along with the 1,510 MW of deficit expected in the country, the Electric Union placed it among those that were under “maintenance.” To do this, they warn, they must “overcome multiple obstacles, such as financing and material resources,” and once again the responsibility falls on the 180 members of the “manufacturing and recovery brigade for spare parts, those that replace imports and save millions.”
In addition to supplying energy to the national electricity system (SEN), specific industries of the eastern region depend on the Antonio Maceo, such as “the liquefied petroleum gas filling plant, sugar mills, hydraulic networks and systems, and even food production,” says the official newspaper Granma. And although the employees add that they do their best to keep the plant running, they know that it is not just up to them.
“Many say ’follow the blackouts’, that’s true, we are aware of it, but you have to be here to see the effort and dedication of our collective, which often literally moves here until service is restored in difficult conditions,” defend the workers of the power plant.
“They also face the harshness of the times, and it is very possible that, after hours working for the electricity of others, they will reach their homes and find them, as happens to any Cuban, in the dark,” explains Granma.
Although Granma avoids the matter, employees are also not taken care of by “wills of steel” as they should be, and many pass the days without the necessary means of work and security. There have already been cases of work accidents in the Renté but none in the last 15 years. However, the workers know the feeling: “When we lose a colleague for this cause, it is terrible in the work and personal sphere.”
Much younger, built in 1988 with French technology and the latest subsidies from the USSR, the Antonio Guiteras de Matanzas is the largest thermoelectric plant in the country and another one that, like its predecessor, has exceeded its useful life. At a critical point, the plant announced that it will stop this year for a capital repair postponed for two decades.
“The Guiteras’ rotors have not opened since that breakdown in 2004. So, do the math. Since 2004, only two capital repairs have been done,” according to a statement last March by Minister of Energy and Mines, Vicente de la O Levy, about the calamitous state of the plant.
The extensive repair challenges a rule that Ecured, the Cuban imitation of Wikipedia, leaves on its website: “Planned maintenance is carried out so that, of the 8,700 hours that the year has, it remains online about 8,000.” The failure, however, is not a surprise for Cubans, accustomed to the fact that the island’s ancient thermoelectric plants leave the SEN more and more often.
Translated by Regina Anavy
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