Halloween: Pumpkins, skeletons and blackouts: Cuban-style Halloween

Havana/In a country where blackouts can last for days, houses threaten to collapse and getting food has become a thriller, Halloween has some tough competition. Cubans know everyday fear too well to need imported ghosts. However, this October 31, some have decided to change their usual nightmares for a few hours for more fun ones. Among pumpkins, skeletons and cobwebs, the festival of the dead gains ground on an Island where terror rarely takes a vacation.

On San Rafael Boulevard, in Central Havana, several businesses have decorated their establishments for the occasion. In one of the stores, a cadaverous figure hangs over the cash register. Pumpkins with sinister smiles and orange cobwebs share space with prices that scare even more than cardboard ghosts.

The celebration has also reached cultural spaces. In The Projectan old house on the corner of 11 and 14, in El Vedado, young people dressed as the Joker, nuns and other characters They met this Friday to celebrate Halloween. The space hosted the party while the neighborhood accumulated about 30 hours without electricity. The cobwebs were artificial, but the darkness was completely authentic.

A makeup artist worked using a table lamp and the organizers used an inverter to keep the equipment running. The administrator, Érica Martínez, explained that the place emerged approximately a year ago to offer young people an opportunity to disconnect from reality. Keeping it open, he acknowledged, is becoming increasingly difficult: when the electricity barely appears, they must reduce the lighting to preserve film screenings and concerts.

Marcos Dulzaides, a 22-year-old physiotherapist who took advantage of his profession to disguise himself as a doctor, told EFE that these celebrations have become popular among their generation, despite the heat and lack of resources. The young man insisted that Halloween cannot be ignored. In a country where so many things are suspended due to lack of fuel, electricity or budget, finding an excuse to have fun already seems like a small act of resistance.

The Havana program also includes costume parties, concerts and electronic music sessions. According to the cultural billboard of the capital, for this Saturday celebrations are announced at Tempo, with tickets for 2,000 pesos, and at the Ateneo de La Habana, for 500. The price of fun is not exactly fantasy for those who depend on a state salary.

The advance of Halloween, however, is not seen well by cultural authorities. In 2019, former minister Abel Prieto included the costumes of this celebration among the American symbols used by businesses seeking to attract customers. In your article The Yankee and the modernpublished in Granmalinked these practices with the cultural influence of the United States. In December 2021, he again complained to deputies about the growing popularity of Halloween among Cuban teenagers.

The concern came from before. In 2014, the official journalist Pedro de la Hoz questioned in Granma what state establishments They will organize Halloween parties. He considered that the institutions in charge of preserving national identity should not promote a “neocolonial” assimilation of foreign customs. Apparently, to certain cultural guardians, an American vampire may be more dangerous than a ruined building.

But even within the official press more tolerant positions appear. In October 2025, Radio 26from Matanzas, proposed to celebrate a Halloween with national identity: Güije or Water Mother costumes, batá drums and pumpkins stuffed with congrí. A formula to reconcile Cuban traditions with a party that has already found followers among young people.

Despite official reluctance, the celebration has ended up taking over even in state venues. A poster, on the central corner of L and 23 in Havana’s Vedado, has been announcing for days a Terror Festival for this Saturday night in the Ambassadors’ Hall of the Habana Libre hotel, a few meters from the Cuban Institute of Radio and Television from where some of the most furious diatribes against this festival have been broadcast.

Meanwhile, reality insists on surpassing any scenery. This Friday, many Havana neighborhoods accumulated more than 40 hours without current. The lack of water, spoiled food and paralyzed businesses are part of a repertoire of horrors much less entertaining than a zombie movie.

In other countries, Halloween ends when midnight hits and the monsters return to the closet. In Cuba, the costumes will be put away, but the blackouts, the lines and the propped-up buildings will remain where they were. The problem is not that Cubans celebrate a night of terror, but that at dawn the nightmares continue.