Residents of the Havanese neighborhood of Lawton, in the municipality of Diez de Octubre, took to the streets on Saturday night with pots, bonfires, and slogans of "Freedom!" and "We want light!" in a new protest against the prolonged blackouts that are suffocating the Cuban capital, according to videos shared by Martí Noticias.
The images, published on X by the activist Elsa Morejón —wife of the former political prisoner and opposition leader Dr. Oscar Elías Biscet— show about twenty residents banging pots in front of fires lit in the middle of the street.
“Protests in Lawton #Havana #Cuba with pot banging and shouts of we want light and freedom,” Morejón wrote on his social media account.
One of the videos captures the moment when police officers arrive in the area to try to disperse the demonstration, with at least one officer recording those present with his cell phone.
"The police arrived at the protest. Lawton #Havana #Cuba," alerted the activist in another post.
The protest on Saturday was triggered by the latest disconnection of the Antonio Guiteras Thermoelectric Power Plant —the largest in the country— from the National Electro-Energetic System (SEN), an event that has occurred 17 times just in 2026 and results in widespread power outages across the island.
It is not the first time that Lawton has erupted. Last Friday, residents of Dolores Street in that neighborhood held a pot-banging protest and burned trash in the public street, in a demonstration that spread across several points on that street due to the prolonged blackouts that are suffocating the area.
In March 2026, their neighbors set fire to streets and burned trash after 36 hours without electricity, resulting in at least one arrest. On July 8, during the fourth total blackout of the year, two poles with decayed bases collapsed in the neighborhood, further exacerbating the already precarious local electrical infrastructure.
During July, there have been protests with pots and pans in Guanabacoa, El Vedado, Central Havana, Old Havana, El Cerro, and Santiago de Cuba.
Julio has been the most critical month of the year in terms of energy. Cuba has accumulated five total collapses of the SEN in 2026 and ten in approximately 24 months. Only in the first 14 days of the month, there were three nationwide blackouts: on the 6th, the 10th, and the 14th of July.
The energy deficit reached 2,341 MW on July 10, with only 935 MW available against a demand of 3,100 MW, leaving 9.6 million Cubans without electricity. In Matanzas, the province where Guiteras is located, power outages reached 87 consecutive hours.
This wave of mobilization is part of an unprecedented cycle of protest: in June 2026, 107 street protests were documented in Cuba —a historical record, nearly double the previous maximum of 54 recorded in March— with 82 of them concentrated in Havana.
The regime's response has been systematic: special troops, police operations, arrests, and targeted internet outages accompany each demonstration, yet repression has failed to silence the discontent of a population that has been enduring temperatures of up to 38°C without electricity for months.
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