Cuba celebrates this Tuesday its fourth consecutive night of protests, with pot-banging and street demonstrations that have spread from Havana to interior provinces such as Ciego de Ávila, Matanzas, and Santiago de Cuba, in response to an unprecedented energy crisis that has left millions of Cubans without electricity for more than 20 hours a day.
The protests began on Friday, March 7, days after the collapse of the Antonio Guiteras thermoelectric plant on March 5 triggered a chain reaction that left over 68% of the island without electricity at the same time, the worst figure recorded in the country's history. The generation deficit has ranged between 1,800 and 2,000 megawatts, with 10 of the 16 thermoelectric units out of service.
In Havana, nightly protests with pots and pans were reported in Miramar, La Lisa, Marianao, Guanabacoa, Regla, San Miguel del Padrón, Centro Habana, Boyeros, El Cotorro, and Arroyo Naranjo, among other municipalities. In Marianao, residents sang the national anthem and burned trash for light during the protests. In La Lisa, slogans such as "Down with the Revolution" and "Down with the dictatorship" were heard. A resident of Guanabacoa captured the collective sentiment with a phrase that circulated on social media: "This is over, pin...!"
On Monday, March 9, students staged a peaceful sit-in on the steps of the University of Havana, with between 20 and 30 initial participants, protesting against power outages, lack of connectivity, and the impracticality of hybrid classes. After nearly two hours of protest, First Deputy Minister of Higher Education, Modesto Ricardo Gómez, intervened to negotiate. The students responded clearly: "They haven't listened to us from the very beginning."
In Santiago de Cuba, the authorities went so far as to dismantle an entire billboard near the University of Oriente after failing to erase the phrases "Out with communism" and "Down with the dictatorship" painted on it. In Ceballos, Ciego de Ávila, and in Jagüey Grande, Matanzas, protests were also recorded on Monday.
The regime's response has been contradictory: the Communist Party spoke of "very difficult times," appealing to Díaz-Canel's "creative resistance," while the government sent rice and milk to protest areas as a containment measure. At the same time, it cut off internet access to hinder the organization of the protesters, as noted by Cuban-American Congressman Carlos A. Giménez.
The energy crisis has specific triggers: the fall of Nicolás Maduro on January 3, 2026 cut off the subsidized Venezuelan crude supply, which accounted for two-thirds of Cuba's energy imports, and a fire at the Nico López refinery on February 13 further exacerbated the situation. Added to this is the structural deterioration of outdated infrastructure and an economy that has experienced a contraction of over 15% in five years.
The background of repression is concrete and recent: in Villa Clara, a court sentenced six citizens to prison terms of up to eight years for shouting "we want electricity" during a blackout in November 2024, according to the Cuban Observatory of Human Rights. In January 2026, there were 953 protests and critical expressions recorded across the island, with 395 direct challenges to the police state, the highest figure in the country's recent history according to the Cuban Observatory of Conflicts.
80% of Cubans believe that the current crisis is worse than the Special Period of the 1990s, according to recent surveys, making the present moment the most severe faced by the population since the Soviet collapse.
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