Residents of the neighborhood El Henequén, in the municipality of Mariel, province of Artemisa, took to the streets to protest on Friday night after experiencing more than four consecutive days without electricity, as reported by Martí Noticias based on videos shared on social media.
A resident of the area, whose identity is being kept confidential, described the situation starkly: "The Cuban people can’t take it anymore. The people in my neighborhood took to the streets after 4 days without electricity as their only means of defense. Cubans only have that way to defend themselves, by calling for protest."
The same neighbor explained that El Henequén is a small fishing village historically overlooked by the authorities: "The schools, homes, and even the people are living in very poor conditions, and this was the only way the community found to unite and fight to make themselves heard."
The protest in Artemisa was not an isolated event. In the capital, residents of the Martín Pérez neighborhood in San Miguel del Padrón blocked the Vía Blanca on Friday night with pot-banging and barricades, in response to prolonged power outages and the widespread deterioration of living conditions.
Havana has already experienced several consecutive nights of demonstrations, extending to Centro Habana, Jaimanitas, Regla, Alamar, La Victoria, and Marianao, among other neighborhoods.
The activist Mario Alberto Hernández Leyva informed Radio Martí that at 128 B Street, in Los Pocitos, Marianao, a pot-banging protest took place around eight in the morning on Friday, because the neighborhood had been without electricity since the previous day.
The protests are taking place in the context of the most severe electrical crisis in Cuban history, which has dramatically intensified in July 2026.
On July 10, the National Electric Power System experienced its fourth total blackout of the year —the eighth in 24 months— triggered by a failure in the 220 kV line between Santa Clara and Sancti Spíritus. Two days earlier, the generation deficit had reached a historical record of 2,341 MW, with only 935 MW available against a demand of around 3,200 MW.
In some areas of the country, such as Matanzas, power outages have lasted up to 87 consecutive hours. In Havana, blackouts average 15 hours a day.
Meanwhile, the regime has chosen denial and repression. Minister Vinicio Marrero attributed the blackout on July 10 to the U.S. embargo, evading any responsibility for the structural collapse of the energy system. The Minister of Energy and Mines, Vicente de la O Levy, merely stated: “No one surrenders here”.
The government has responded to the protests with police deployments, arrests, and internet shutdowns, in an especially tense context: Friday marked the fifth anniversary of the historic protests of July 11, 2021.
For this Sunday, the Electric Union forecasted a capacity of only 1,278 MW against a maximum demand of 3,200 MW, resulting in an expected deficit of 1,922 MW —equivalent to 60% of the energy required— and a projected impact of 61% on the total demand during peak hours.
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