Three Cuban mothers, accompanied by four small children, one of whom was in a stroller, stood in front of the residence of the ruler Miguel Díaz-Canel in Havana to demand answers regarding the prolonged power outages affecting their families.
“They are going to receive me! My name has been noted on all kinds of lists. But right now, what we need to do is find a solution!”, said one of the women in front of plainclothes police and State Security agents. “With my heart in my hand! I am not going to move from here! They have to give me an answer here!”
In a video circulating on social media, one of the women can be heard saying that they went to the place "due to the power outages," referring to the blackouts affecting the country. The images show determined mothers with their children by their side, while a police patrol was already deployed on site, ready to suppress them.
"They are unpleasant in number", one of the mothers expresses indignantly in the video, referring to the agents guarding the president's residence.
The videos were shared by the activist Idelisa Diasniurka Salcedo Verdecia, who reported the incident on her social media, generating a wave of solidarity and supportive comments for women. Many Cuban users both inside and outside the island have pointed to the gesture as a symbol of the frustration families feel in light of the escalating energy crisis and the indifference of the authorities.
This is not an isolated incident. In April of last year, at least four mothers with their children also stood outside the president's home to demand medicine, food, and shelter. What they received, as they reported at the time, was increased surveillance, threats, and a plate of white rice, croquettes, and cabbage.
Estanys Rodríguez, a 20-year-old woman and mother of a two-year-old girl, walked 45 minutes with her daughter on her shoulder from Marianao to Díaz-Canel's house. She did it with one conviction: "I can't bear to struggle here any longer, especially being Cuban with my child." That day, the only thing she had to offer her daughter for breakfast was a soda.
Rodríguez, like many other Cuban mothers, has been a victim of threats for sharing her grievances on social media. "It was all threats, that if I did it again, they would prosecute me, and I told them they could do it because the one suffering right now is my little girl", she said in an interview with the channel Universo Increíble.
“Children in Cuba do not live as they should. We are in inhumane conditions, it is not fair,” denounced one of the mothers in April, following the failed attempt to obtain a response from the government.
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