Santiago de Cuba experienced a night of intense popular protest on Saturday, May 30, with pots and pans banging in the Micro 3 and El Salao neighborhoods, tires burning in the Los Pinos area, and slogans of "Down with the dictatorship!" and "Homeland and Life!" shouted in the streets, all triggered by the prolonged blackouts that are suffocating the province.
The independent journalist Yosmany Mayeta Labrada documented the events almost in real-time through his Facebook profile, describing the day as "a very busy night in Santiago de Cuba."
The first incidents were recorded around 9:40 PM when residents of the Los Pinos neighborhood placed at least two burning tires in the street near the local market, while the area remained almost in complete darkness.
According to a neighbor who spoke anonymously, a similar situation had occurred three days earlier in the same location, and after the arrival of a patrol and State Security personnel, the electricity service was restored almost immediately, suggesting that protests serve as a pressure mechanism to elicit responses from the regime.
In the San Pedrito neighborhood, specifically on Bacardí Street, several residents—including children—began shouting anti-government slogans. Mayeta Labrada reported that "the district delegate arrived and told them to stop shouting," which illustrates the direct pressure that regime representatives exert on the demonstrators.
The pot-banging protests later spread to the neighborhoods Micro 3 and El Salao, as confirmed by the journalist himself in a subsequent post: "They are banging pots in Micro 3, El Salao"...
The regime deployed its repressive forces early on. Mayeta Labrada reported militarization at several points in the city, particularly on Morro Road between Trocha and Calle 3, and stated that "Johnson has dispatched police and black berets at various points in Santiago de Cuba," referring to Beatriz Johnson Urrutia, the First Secretary of the PCC in the province.
The so-called black berets belong to the National Special Brigade of the Ministry of the Interior, a unit historically deployed to suppress protests, remembered for its notorious repressive role during the demonstrations of July 11, 2021.
The intensity of popular discontent is so great that at times protests occur simultaneously in several parts of the country. This very Saturday night, Residents of Cayo Hueso, Centro Habana, also staged a massive pot-banging protest, according to journalist Mario Pentón. The protest, internet users reported, took place after receiving only an hour and a half of electricity since the previous day.
The episode on Saturday is not an isolated incident in Santiago de Cuba. On May 13, there were reports of pot-banging in Reparto Portuondo after more than 12 hours without electricity, and on May 18, there was a protest gathering in the historic center of the city, at the intersection of San Pedro and Martí. Previously, on March 18 and 23, pot-banging had already been reported in several neighborhoods of Santiago.
The backdrop is an energy crisis of historic proportions. By May 29, the Electric Union reported an availability of just 1,400 MW against a demand of 2,770 MW, with 106 distributed generation plants out of service due to a lack of fuel. In municipalities like Songo-La Maya there were blackouts of up to 50 consecutive hours, and the Minister of Energy, Vicente de la O Levy, publicly acknowledged on May 14 that the situation was "acute, critical, and extremely tense" and that the country had "absolutely no diesel."
The magnitude of discontent is reflected in the figures from the Cuban Conflict Observatory, which reported 1,245 protests, complaints, and expressions of discontent in March 2026 and 1,133 in April throughout the country. Prisoners Defenders also documented that Cuba reached 1,250 political prisoners in March, with hundreds of short-term arrests directly linked to the demonstrations.
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