A woman was seriously injured on Tuesday, July 29 after being struck by a car during a protest in the Lawton neighborhood, Diez de Octubre municipality, in Havana, while residents were protesting against the prolonged blackouts affecting the area.
According to witnesses who reported the incident to CubaNet in a video published that day, the driver was not arrested despite the presence of police officers at the scene.
The testimonies collected are compelling. "The car ran over him, the police did nothing, no one moved, no one followed the car, nothing at all," recounted one of the witnesses.
Another witness described the vehicle as a "drone" —a Cuban colloquial term for almendrones, cars manufactured before 1959— and did not hide his suspicions: "It looks like that guy was one of them", he said, hinting that the driver might be a regime enforcer.
The victim's health status is unknown at this time. There is no official statement from the Cuban government regarding the incident.
The police's passivity in the face of the incident fuels the hypothesis that it may have been intentional, possibly a new twist in the repression of protests aimed at deactivating them.
For now, it is an unconfirmed hypothesis, but it gains traction in a context where the regime has resorted to summons, fines, and detentions to curb mobilizations.
Lawton has recorded at least four documented days of protest in July. On July 18, there was a cacerolazo with burning trash on Dolores Street, accompanied by a deployment of military and police vehicles.
On the 19th, residents took to the streets with slogans of “We want light!” and “Freedom!”. On the 24th and 25th of July, there was another round of pot banging that spread to multiple areas of Havana, Santiago de Cuba, and Cienfuegos.
The incident is part of a repressive escalation affecting the entire capital. According to CubaNet, in the neighborhood of El Fanguito — Plaza de la Revolución municipality — the residents, who have staged three protests in two months, are being called in individually and fined 7,000 pesos.
After the blockade of Avenida 23 on Wednesday, State Security arrested two mothers and an officer was recorded threatening neighbors against further protests.
A protester from El Fanguito, who spoke anonymously to the mentioned outlet, summed up the situation succinctly: "For going out to protest or for speaking up and demanding, we are drawing attention." She added, "We are not saying down with this, or up with that, or anything else, because then we would really disappear. We want them to provide us electricity like everyone else."
The Cuban Observatory of Human Rights recorded 1,949 repressive actions and 257 arbitrary detentions in the first half of 2026, with 107 protests just in June, 82 of which took place in Havana. Despite the oppression on Tuesday, the residents of Lawton did not stop: they continued banging their pots and pans.
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