A resident of Holguín raised alarms on social media by reporting that groups of young people are taking advantage of nighttime power outages to launch pieces of rebar with slingshots at neighbors sitting on the porches of their homes to escape the heat. The alert was posted on Facebook by Leoncio Emilio Magariño Ajo, who described how one of these projectiles struck inside his own home.
"At night and during power outages, young people throw pieces of rebar with slingshots at those sitting in doorways to cool off from the heat," wrote Magariño Ajo in his post.
The man described the moment when his oldest son had just entered the house when he heard a loud bang: the projectile had struck the Motorina—an electric motorcycle—parked inside.
"Imagine that this happens to a child or anyone... That's how things are to top it all off," warned the whistleblower.
The photographs accompanying the publication show a small metallic fragment of approximately one or two centimeters, dark and showing signs of oxidation, consistent with a piece of cut steel or iron, the kind of material that is abundant in a country with deteriorating infrastructure.
Magariño Ajo pointed out that the police have not taken any action regarding this situation, a neglect that is repeated in multiple provinces across the country.
The report comes amid an extreme electricity crisis in Holguín: this Thursday, the Fray Benito circuit had accumulated 12 hours and 37 minutes of outage, and Holguín Mir surpassed 10 hours, with a provincial capacity served of only 60 MW.
That prolonged darkness turns the nights into a setting conducive to violence.
The pattern of projectile attacks in the province is not new. In September 2025, a train coming from Santiago de Cuba was stoned between Cristino Naranjo and Fuente, in Holguín, and a stone went through a window of the car without causing injuries. That same year, in July, there were similar attacks against the Havana-Holguín train and the Havana-Bayamo train.
The police inaction denounced by Magariño Ajo aligns with a documented pattern throughout 2026 in several provinces.
In Santiago de Cuba, a family waited over ten hours for the National Revolutionary Police after reporting a robbery; the officers justified the delay with a "shift change." In another case, a citizen from the same city reported that the agents took three days to respond after a portable power station was stolen and did not conduct any inspection.
In June 2026, authorities in Guantánamo arrested 11 members of three gangs accused of at least nine crimes; the assaults took place at night, and the suspects were mostly young individuals without jobs, a profile that matches the one described in the Holguin complaint.
The Cuban Citizen Audit Observatory reported 2,833 crimes in 2025, an increase of 115% compared to the previous year, with thefts being the predominant category. In September 2026, 11 violent deaths were recorded nationwide, according to data released this week.
Related videos:
Filed under: