At night, during one of the frequent power outages that Candelarios have become used to, they could be a hundred miles apart. The store remains brightly illuminated; it has its own generator. The polyclinic goes dark along with the rest of the town.

It's not that the polyclinic doesn't have a generator, says William Borroto, an electrician in town. It's just that "it's been sitting in the sidelines for a long time at the maintenance center." No one remembers what is the matter with it, but whatever the case, the parts must be paid for in dollars, and the polyclinic does not generate dollars in the normal course of business. So the generator sits, and the polyclinic goes dark from time to time.

Such as for instance, at 10 p.m. last Thursday, February 5, when someone brought in an older patient suffering from a heart attack. The car in which they brought him in had to be pressed into service, shining its headlights into the building to shed what little light was ultimately available to treat the patient.

"There used to be five battery-powered fluorescent lamps for emergencies, but they have disappeared," said Borroto, the electrician.