Residents of the La Güinera neighborhood in the Arroyo Naranjo municipality of Havana held a pot-banging protest on Thursday night against the prolonged blackouts affecting the area.
The event was documented in a 38-second video shared by Martí Noticias on Facebook, where a person is seen holding a pot in the darkness while the neighbors bang pots loudly and shout in unison: "The light!"
La Güinera is not just any neighborhood on the map of Cuban resistance. It was one of the epicenters of the social uprising on July 11, 2021, where Diubis Laurencio Tejeda, aged 36, was killed by gunfire from a sublieutenant of the Minint, and dozens of residents were arrested.
The neighborhood had already witnessed another protest on March 26, documented by independent journalist Camila Acosta, which makes this new episode a sign that discontent is not easing.
The protest on Thursday is part of a national wave of demonstrations that has been ongoing for several weeks. Just in the days leading up to this, there were clanging of pots and pans in Guantánamo on April 9, following reports of residents experiencing only 45 minutes to an hour of electricity per day.
Recently, similar actions of social discontent have been reported in Santos Suárez, municipality of Diez de Octubre, due to power outages lasting up to 15 consecutive hours; and in the municipality of Playa, after more than 10 hours without electricity.
The energy crisis fueling discontent is devastating. The National Electric System has collapsed at least seven times in 18 months. The generation deficit reached a record high of 1,945 MW on April 1, and by Thursday, the Electric Union forecasted impacts of 1,630 MW during peak hours, with 54% of the island affected simultaneously.
The country's main thermoelectric plant, Antonio Guiteras, located in Matanzas, has been facing malfunctions since February. The supply of Venezuelan oil was interrupted since January following the capture of Nicolás Maduro, and the first oil tanker in three months, the Russian Anatoly Kolodkin, arrived in April with 100,000 tons of crude, covering consumption for between seven and ten days.
The regime's response has been one of repression and criminalization. At least 14 people have been arrested since the protests began. The ruler Miguel Díaz-Canel described the demonstrations as "vandalism" and warned that "there will be no impunity".
The regime's double standard became evident this Friday, when the state media commemorated the 68th anniversary of the National Revolutionary Strike of 1958 against dictator Fulgencio Batista (1901-1973) as a heroic act, while silencing and criminalizing the current protests of Cubans who are merely asking for electricity.
Filed under: