A video sent to the journalist Mario J. Pentón and published in the early hours of Saturday documents the true scale of the protests on Friday, July 24, in the Havana municipality of San Miguel del Padrón.
The images show dozens of neighbors from La Cumbre neighborhood—adjacent to Diezmero—marching in a raucous pot-banging protest, shouting "freedom," along a street where a dumpster is visible in flames.
The nighttime images, captured by local residents and shared by Pentón on his X account, also reveal the massive arrival of uniformed personnel from the MININT with trucks, patrol cars, motorcycles, and other vehicles.
In the audio of the video, a neighbor can be heard identifying the regime's vehicles: "All those cars belong to them. The truck stopped there... This is to pick up people."
The contradiction highlighted by the protesters is hard to overlook: the Cuban regime claims it has no fuel to generate electricity—the direct trigger for the protests—yet it has the resources to mobilize dozens of motorized vehicles to suppress the demonstration.
On Friday night, the National Electric Union reported an impact of 2,315 MW at 9:10 PM, nearing the historic record of 2,341 MW recorded on July 8.
During this month, the National Electroenergetic System experienced at least four total outages, and in some neighborhoods of Havana, the blackouts lasted 35 consecutive hours.
The cacerolazo on Friday was in response to a national call issued by the Assembly of the Cuban Resistance for 9:00 p.m., on the eve of July 26. The regime attempted to dissuade the protest by restoring electricity in several neighborhoods right at that time, but the demonstrations continued nonetheless in Havana, Santiago de Cuba, and Cienfuegos.
The police deployment in El Diezmero and La Cumbre was not an isolated incident. Citizen journalist Yainier Hidalgo Bajuelo confirmed on Facebook the presence of law enforcement in the area, and a viral video that circulated on social media was titled: "Military deployment in El Diezmero, the Americans did not arrive, it is against a defenseless people."
San Miguel del Padrón has been experiencing increasing conflict for months. In May, residents protested with the slogan "Electricity and food!"; in June, there were tire burnings; on July 15, residents reported going a month without water supply; and a week later, a fire was recorded in La Cumbre.
In Lawton, another tumultuous neighborhood in Havana, residents used pots and fire extinguishers to amplify the noise of the pot banging.
The repressive pattern of the regime in July included the deployment of black berets from the National Special Brigade of MININT in El Vedado on July 18, and a police concentration in Old Havana on July 12. Cubalex recorded 319 repressive events and 253 protests just in June 2026.
"The militarization is not aimed at an external enemy but at the Cuban population itself," warned Laritza Diversent, director of Cubalex, in recent statements.
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