The clandestine group Comandos Libres de Holguín (CLH) has once again made its mark in the public space of the eastern city: slogans such as "Down with the PCC," "Freedom for the people," and "Canel the murderer" were spray-painted at the Plaza de los Chinos, near the Vladimir Ilich Lenin General University Hospital, the main healthcare facility in the province.
The activist Ariel Góngora shared images and a video on Facebook this Monday, attributing the graffiti to the CLH. “The CLH is again spray painting in the Plaza de los Chinos near the Lenin hospital in Holguín. We continue, we’re going for more,” Góngora wrote, whose post garnered over 6,000 views in less than 24 hours.
The new graffiti appears just a week after similar slogans emerged in Santa Clara. On September 15, messages stating "Down with Canel" and "Down with Canel and the PCC" were found on the façade of the University Theater of the Central University "Marta Abreu" of Las Villas, Díaz-Canel's alma mater.
The authorities responded by covering the messages with Cuban flags and deploying agents from the Technical Investigations Department along with canine units at the venue.
The situation in Holguín is characterized by an acute crisis on multiple fronts. The provincial Electric Company acknowledged in June a supply of only 70 MW against a demand of 240 MW, less than 30% of what is necessary, with power outages that have exceeded 50 continuous hours in some circuits.
This electrical crisis is compounded by a lack of drinking water. In September, more than 229,000 people in the city were facing supply cycles exceeding seven days, and the Lenin Hospital itself —one of the locations where the graffiti appeared— continued to lack regular access to the service.
Cuba has experienced at least eight total blackouts of the national electrical system in 2026 so far, a figure that reflects the collapse of the energy infrastructure after decades of disinvestment.
Clandestine graffiti have become a recurring form of protest across the island. The Cuban Conflict Observatory registered in June 2026 a record 41 anti-government graffiti in a single month, the highest number since they began tracking them in September 2020. In February of that same year, they had counted 42, another monthly peak, within a total of 1,185 spontaneous protests or denunciations.
Holguín has its own history of this type of dissenting expression. In August 2022, posters reading "Down with the Dictatorship" appeared at Loma de la Cruz, and in June 2025, over twenty graffiti covered the wall of the Mayabe cemetery with phrases like "Homeland and Life" and "Freedom for the people."
The Instagram account "Guapo y Fajao," which has documented several of these actions, summarized the dynamic with a phrase that circulated after the graffiti in Santa Clara: "The regime can cover a phrase with flags and repaint a wall, but it cannot hide the growing discontent within Cuba."
Filed under: