Residents of the neighborhood Dulce Nombre, in the Havana municipality of El Cotorro, staged a pots and pans protest against the Cuban dictatorship tonight, amid a blackout that has left them without electricity all day.
The activist and opposition leader Eliécer Ávila Cicilia shared the protest on his verified Facebook account with the message: "Reports of a pots and pans protest in Dulce Nombre, a municipality of Cotorro. 'Down with the dictatorship,' shout the Cubans."
The video accompanying the post, lasting just 13 seconds, was recorded in total darkness due to a power outage.
The images depict a flame on the street, a blue/white light —possibly a phone or flashlight— and silhouettes of buildings in the background.
El Cotorro had already been the scene of protests in March 2026, when local residents held a pot-banging protest during the seventh consecutive day of demonstrations in Havana, also motivated by prolonged power outages.
The new outbreak occurs within the context of an electrical crisis that the Cuban government itself has described as "critical." Between June 5 and June 7, the Electric Union (UNE) reported generation deficits nearing 2,000 MW against a demand of 2,570 MW.
On June 7th, up to 66% of Cuba experienced a simultaneous power outage, according to press reports citing the UNE. In several neighborhoods of Havana, the outages lasted up to 22 hours each day.
Since June third, desperation has spilled into the streets of the capital with pot-banging protests in El Vedado, Centro Habana, Playa, Regla, Habana Vieja, Cayo Hueso, San Miguel del Padrón, Marianao, Boyeros, and Tulipán, among other neighborhoods.
On June seventh, the pots against power outages erupted in various parts of the city, and on the night of June eighth Centro Habana experienced a night of tension with intense protests.
The regime attributes the crisis to failures in the thermoelectric plants, a lack of fuel, and the obsolescence of the electrical system, without taking responsibility for decades of disinvestment and mismanagement.
The level of accumulated discontent is reflected in the figures from the Observatorio Cubano de Conflictos: 1,311 protests, complaints, and critical expressions throughout Cuba just during May 2026, with 46 street protests that month. The clamor tonight in El Cotorro confirms that the wave of indignation is not subsiding.
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