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Leonardo Romero Negrín, an activist with a long history of political persecution, was violently arrested on Wednesday night at the corner of Ánimas and Consulado, in Centro Habana, after joining a pot-banging demonstration by residents protesting the prolonged blackouts and the lack of water that suffocate the country.
According to reports shared on social media by the organization Justicia 11J and the Academic Freedom Observatory, police officers assaulted him and took him to the station on Zanja Street, in the same municipality.
Family and friends waited for hours in front of the police station without receiving any concrete information: first, they were promised updates at 8:00 in the morning, then it was pushed back to 10:00, and finally to 2:00 in the afternoon.
According to reports on social media available at the time of this note, authorities had opened a criminal case against him for the alleged crime of "public disorder," and Romero Negrín remained in custody.
The journalist and researcher Lisbeth Moya González, a close friend of the activist, led the public denunciation and warned that she will not let the case go silent. “Leo was detained in his neighborhood in Centro Habana for doing what every decent Cuban should do right now: participating in a cacerolazo,” she wrote on her Facebook profile.
Moya González also warned about the opening of the case: “Gentlemen, Leonardo Romero Negrín has been charged with a criminal case for public disorder. It seems they won't release him today.”
Gretel Alvisa Realín, for her part, summarized the arbitrariness of the arrest: “Playing the cauldrons in Cuba is currently criminalized, as citizens we cannot express our discontent, dissatisfaction, and frustration of living in a hijacked and silenced country.”
The detention is part of a sustained pattern of retaliation against Romero Negrín. In April 2021, he was arrested on Obispo Street for carrying a sign that said "Socialism yes, repression no."
During the protests on July 11, 2021, he was violently detained while trying to protect a former student who was being beaten by plainclothes agents; he remained in custody for six days and reported being beaten, struck on the legs with a club, and receiving a headbutt to the nose.
In March 2025, the police arrested him again for protesting with a blank sign in Central Park in Havana, and in February 2026, he was arrested along with teacher Alina Bárbara López in Matanzas, being released hours later with a warning of possible charges.
The arrest occurs amid a wave of cacerolazos and protests shaking Cuba since June, driven by an unprecedented energy crisis: the electrical deficit reached a record high of 2,211 MW this Thursday, leaving approximately 69% of the country without electricity.
Justicia 11J and the Observatory of Academic Freedom drew the attention of diplomatic representations in Cuba, as well as UNESCO, the European Union, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, and Amnesty International regarding the arrests.
Moya González concluded her statement with a direct warning to the regime: "Release Leonardo Romero now. And if you don't, narratively you will have another hero imprisoned because he is one. Leonardo Romero Negrín is a silent hero: the hero of the people in his neighborhood, of his students, of everyone who knows him."
On social media, the case has sparked a wave of solidarity and condemnation, with numerous voices denouncing the arrest and calling for his release.
Notable figures such as filmmaker Fernando Pérez and intellectual Alina Bárbara López Hernández have joined the call, in a context marked by the growing climate of repression and the criminalization of peaceful protest in Cuba.
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