A Cuban State Security agent was recorded on video while threatening residents of the Havana neighborhood El Fanguito with identifying and detaining those who posted images of his presence on social media.
During a visit following the protests on Thursday on Avenida 23, the enforcer gathered a group of residents on the street to intimidate and coerce them into preventing the recurrence of such demonstrations and road closures in the capital.
The video, shared on social media by the rapper and activist Eliécer Márquez Duany, better known as "El Funky," shows the officer interrupting a mother who was describing the situation of the children in the neighborhood — "sleeping on top of their mothers, without food, with nothing, without bread" — to warn those present about the consequences of documenting his actions.
"I am from Security. I know who posted the photo, even if it was sent to a relative abroad and that relative uploaded it. I can trace the link, the IP address, whatever I have. I can find whatever it is, and then I come and look for them," the agent declared in front of the gathered neighbors.
The officer tried to establish a legal distinction to justify his threats: "Look, recording is not a crime. But I am a public official, and you commit an offense when you post about me on social media without my authorization and consent. Are we clear?"
Showing understanding of the community's discomfort, the agent referred to the case of two linemen detained in Calabazar, Boyeros, who were arrested on July 17 accused of selling electricity illegally to private businesses while the area was experiencing blackouts. However, he insisted that the protests and the people's outrage made it difficult for him to investigate whether the linemen in the area were also corrupt, as the neighbors had reportedly alleged.
"The investigative process is underway. But I'm not going to catch the linemen with anything up their sleeves [...] because you have them threatened here. [...] The linemen from Boyeros are in jail," said the agent in an attempt to calm the neighborhood’s anger and redirect the dissatisfaction towards the workers who are supposedly being investigated.
The repression was not limited to verbal threats. In another post on Facebook, Márquez Duany stated that State Security arrested two mothers at the police unit of Zapata and C. One of them was identified as María Yilian Franco Díaz, who was taken to the station along with her four-year-old son, José Luis Navarro.
The repressive pattern followed the sequence already documented in other protests: just a few hours after the blockade of Avenida 23, the regime restored electricity in El Fanguito —a maneuver that activists interpret as a tactic to demobilize the protest without addressing its underlying causes— and shortly after, arrests began.
In Nuevitas, Camagüey, in 2022, the State Security launched a crackdown against those who participated in or spread the protests, involving detentions, summons, and interrogations.
Among the most well-known cases is that of Mayelín Rodríguez Prado, arrested after live-streaming the police repression and sentenced to 15 years in prison for documenting the protests in that locality.
The young mother was later showcased by the official spokesperson Humberto López in a video of self-incrimination broadcast by state television, used as a public warning against the protesters.
In June, agents threatened the activist Manuel Cuesta Morúa with “shooting him in the head” if he continued promoting pot-banging protests.
Repression has left a measurable mark: Cubalex recorded nearly 2,000 repressive actions in the first half of 2026, and in July there were at least 24 arrests following a protest in Luyanó and four arrests in Sibanicú, Camagüey, after a demonstration for water and electricity.
Protests in El Fanguito erupted after the neighborhood experienced over 48 hours without electricity, water, or gas, amid the most severe energy crisis in Cuba's history, with deficits that have left 74% of the island without electricity at peak demand times.
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