Residents of the neighborhood San Ricardo, in Santiago de Cuba, took to the streets this Sunday to protest after several consecutive days without electricity, in a scene captured in a video shared by independent journalist Yosmany Mayeta Labrada on social media.
The images show outraged neighbors, apparently referring to a local official identified as "Viviana," who arrived at the scene in a luxury car.
"They don't want to provide electricity, people are getting sick," protests a voice in the video, while pointing at the alleged official and those accompanying her.
The citizen who records the audiovisual piece accuses the alleged representative of the regime of failing to solve the problem and enjoying privileges denied to the rest of the population: "They are always on the same topic, with electricity in their homes... And here we are, dying," he laments.
The regime's response didn't take long. An internet user reported in the comments of the video that several police patrols arrived in the neighborhood, adding bitterly, "there's gas for that."
The protest in San Ricardo is not an isolated event. The cacerolazo in the Micro 2 neighborhood of Abel Santa María last Thursday, after more than ten days without electricity due to a broken transformer, has been part of the wave that is spreading across several neighborhoods in the city.
Other neighbors from nearby areas warned that they are also at their limit. "Soon we will be out, the neighbors of René Ramos, the transformer has collapsed; now we'll see how long this agony lasts," wrote an internet user in the comments. From another area of Santiago, someone reported "almost two months without water."
A neighbor described the electrical situation in her circuit as "blackmail": "Today, they turned it off for 40 minutes," she noted. Other comments reflected the collective exhaustion: "It's too much, the blackout, for God's sake" and "And with no hope for anything."
Some internet users called for unity among neighborhoods: "But it’s not one neighborhood now and another later; let's come together as one," wrote one of them.
This Sunday, the case of a mother from Altamira, Santiago de Cuba, became known, who upon protesting for electricity, food, and freedom received a visit from three patrols with five police officers per vehicle, who "jumped out running with batons in hand."
The electrical crisis fueling these protests has structural roots. The generation deficit has surpassed 2,000 MW several times in May and June. More than 106 distributed generation plants have been out of service due to a lack of fuel, and the Energy Minister himself, Vicente de la O Levy, admitted in May that the country had "absolutely no diesel."
In June 2026, power outages exceed 20 hours daily in Havana and can reach 40 to 50 consecutive hours in eastern provinces, such as Santiago. The electricity deficit in Cuba has become the main catalyst for a wave of protests that the Cuban Observatory of Conflicts reported as 1,311 demonstrations, complaints, and critical civic expressions just in May 2026, a 29.5% increase compared to the same month in 2025.
Santiago de Cuba has been the epicenter of this wave: the casserole protests in Micro 3 and El Salao at the end of May, the protest on June 11 with slogans of "we want change," and now the demonstrations in San Ricardo paint a picture of frustration that spreads throughout the eastern city.
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