“Homeland and Life” and messages against Díaz-Canel are painted in Arroyo Naranjo

Three antigovernment graffiti pieces appeared on Wednesday, painted on electrical infrastructure and walls in the municipality of Arroyo Naranjo, in the south of Havana, according to images shared on Facebook with the text “This is how Arroyo woke up today, May 13th.”

The photographs show the phrase “HOMELAND AND LIFE” written on a blue electrical box, “CANEL SINGAO” on an electrical transformer, and “CANEL PUTA” on the wall of a building, all directly referencing President Miguel Díaz-Canel.

The graffiti appears amid a wave of protests that have been shaking Havana for several days. This morning, residents of Marianao took to the streets with pot-banging, bonfires, and garbage burning, while on Tuesday night a pot-banging protest erupted in Reparto Bahía with chants of "Down with the dictatorship!".

On Monday, a banging of pots and pans and street blockade in Luyanó added another municipality in Havana to the protest map, during a week marked by blackouts that the Electric Union projected with a deficit close to 2,000 MW during the peak nighttime hours this Wednesday.

Arroyo Naranjo has a recent history of protests. Residents of Mantilla staged a pot-banging protest and street blockade on March 13, and the neighborhood of La Güinera — a symbol of repression during the July 11, 2021 — protested again with pot-banging on March 26 and April 11 of this year.

The phrase "Patria y Vida" holds significant symbolic weight within the Cuban opposition. The homonymous song was released on February 16, 2021, by Yotuel Romero, Descemer Bueno, Maykel Osorbo, El Funky, and Gente de Zona as a direct response to the Castroist slogan "Patria o Muerte." It won two Latin Grammy awards that year and became the anthem of the massive protests on #11J.

Since then, painting that phrase in public spaces has become an act of resistance that the regime actively pursues. In 2024, the artist Yasmany González was charged with the crime of "enemy propaganda" — punishable by four to ten years — for painting protest posters.

The campaign "Pinta tu pedacito," which emerged in June 2025, expanded anti-government graffiti to Santiago de Cuba, Holguín, Artemisa, the Isle of Youth, and numerous neighborhoods in Havana, taking advantage of the darkness during power outages to take action.

According to data published earlier this month, more than 1,100 protests were recorded in April alone across Cuba, amid an energy crisis with at least seven total collapses of the electrical system in the last 18 months and blackouts that can exceed twenty hours a day.