A group of women blocked the Calzada de Diez de Octubre this Friday, in front of the Jesus Good Shepherd Church in Loma de Jesús del Monte, to demand a solution to the prolonged blackouts that are suffocating that Havana community.
The images shared on social media show the protestors standing in the middle of the road, blocking traffic on one of the busiest sections of the Diez de Octubre municipality.
The protest was shared by activist Yaima Pardo and documented by Orlando Ramírez Cutiño, a relative of former political prisoner Jonathan Torres Farrat, who was arrested at the age of 17 in that same municipality during the protests of July 11, 2021.
"They are mothers who have decided to block the road due to the lack of electricity, because in seven days they give us electricity for 10 or 15 minutes and then it goes out again. The workload is overwhelming, and the little food you manage to get during the day spoils," Ramírez reported.
The situation described by the testimonies is desperate: families with no means to preserve food, children sleeping in doorways to escape the heat, and elderly individuals without any relief from the suffocating Cuban summer.
"There is nowhere to get food from, nowhere to feed the family. Children are sleeping on the sidewalks, the elderly—it's sad what is happening to the Cuban people," added Ramírez.
In his description, he did not hide his skepticism about a possible constructive response from the regime: “We await the response of the repressors who come to repress. We don’t expect anything else. The way we are living is unsustainable.”
«Diez de Octubre has just closed down, it has just taken to the streets. This is Padre y Vida, freedom for the people of Cuba. Down with the dictatorship, freedom for political prisoners», concluded Ramírez in his live broadcast.
The protest is happening at the worst moment of the Cuban electrical crisis. This very Friday, the national electrical system came close to setting a record for outages, reaching a deficit of 2,315 MW at 9:10 PM, just below the historic maximum of 2,341 MW recorded on July 8, 2026.
Havana has become one of the epicenters of popular resistance against blackouts.
At the beginning of the month, at least 24 people were detained following a protest in Luyanó.
Just 10 days later, residents of Lawton took to the streets with pots and pans and bonfires, shouting “We want light!” and “Freedom!”.
In April, another group of women had already blocked a street at the intersection of Mario and La Calzada, with the police arriving within minutes.
According to a study by the NGO Cuban Observatory of Human Rights, in the first half of 2026, there were 1,949 repressive actions and approximately 257 arbitrary arrests.
In June, 107 protests were recorded across the island, 82 of which were concentrated in Havana, with the deployment of riot police forces, as reported by the organization in light of the record number of protests.
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