Thousands of people from Santiago in the streets for the Conga de los Hoyos.

The traditional "invasion" of the people of Santiago, which every July fills the streets of their city to the rhythm of the Conga de los Hoyos, left this Saturday images of large crowds on the main avenues and police to safeguard the participants.

Independent journalist Yosmany Mayeta Labrada, originally from that city, described the moment as a "sea of people and police" while sharing images of the celebration.

"The characteristic rhythm of this century-old Conga Santiaguera, as if it were the overwhelming passage of a 'Train,' attracts thousands of Cubans and also leaves many young people injured and killed in its wake, who take advantage of the tumult to exact revenge after some old fight," the communicator denounced on his Facebook profile.

In another video, Mayeta Labrada shares how Cuban military and police are mobilized to the conga to repress any signs of insurrection.

The user identified as Aris Arias Batalla said that in the eastern city, in addition to the celebrations brought by this conga, there was also rain, in a gentle and intermittent manner.

In 2022, a segment of a Santiago conga that describes the food scarcity and other basic product shortages that Cubans suffer went viral on social media, also opening the debate between resilience as a virtue or excessive endurance as a misfortune.

"They no longer give me beef / neither the first nor the second cuts / they give me coffee diluted / the multipurpose pot lost its lid... They've taken away my bath soap / the one for washing with detergent / they've taken away a pound of sugar / and they've freed the toothpaste," says the chorus of the song that has attracted so much attention, sung by Rubestier Porte Carrión.

The images showed the people of Santiago singing along to the song and fully immersed in the musical moment, beyond the tragedy implied in the lyrics.

That same year, shocking images of the Cuban police beating a man during the Conga were shared on various social media sites.

In one of them, the moment is captured when more than a dozen police officers broke up an incident with blows in the middle of the crowded cultural event, and an officer was seen hitting a man with a baton.