Residents of the neighborhood El Fanguito, in the Plaza de la Revolución municipality of Havana, blocked Avenida 23 on Wednesday night —one of the main arteries of the capital— as a form of protest after enduring more than 48 hours without electricity, water, or gas.
A video shared on Facebook by the rapper and activist Eliécer Márquez Duany, better known as "El Funky," captured the moment when a protester confronted a driver who intended to break through the blockade on the avenue: "Leave, leave, we've been without power for over 24 hours! There are children here crying! Leave, turn around, turn around!"
The blockade of Avenida 23 has a significant symbolic and logistical impact: it is a heavily trafficked route, and its closure forces authorities to respond or face circulation issues in the heart of the city.
El Fanguito is one of the most precarious settlements in Havana, located next to the Almendares River. According to the magazine El Estornudo, in 2016 almost 200 of its homes were not listed in the census and only one was legalized by the state, illustrating decades of institutional neglect.
The protest on Thursday adds to other recent events in the country. Strong banging of pots and pans shook Old Havana on Wednesday amid a prolonged blackout. Days earlier, women blocked the Calzada de Diez de Octubre to demand a solution to the electricity outages.
This Thursday, there were also reports of pot banging protests in Santiago de Cuba for the same reason.
The new wave of protests began in March 2026 and has intensified throughout July, becoming the largest in Havana since July 11, 2021. In June, 107 protests were recorded in Cuba, with the capital leading the mobilizations.
The energy crisis that has triggered these protests is the most severe that the island has ever experienced. The day before, the Electric Union predicted a deficit of 2,380 MW, a new historical record of power outages that, if confirmed, would mean leaving 74% of the island without electricity simultaneously at peak demand.
In July, there were three total collapses of the National Electroenergy System in less than eight days, and outages lasting up to 87 consecutive hours in some provinces. Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz attributed the crisis to fuel shortages, without providing concrete solutions to a population that has been enduring extreme conditions for months.
While the regime remains silent in the face of protests, desperation in neighborhoods like El Fanguito continues to grow: families with young children, without refrigeration, running water, or gas, who have decided to take to the streets because they have nothing left to lose.
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