50 people were arrested on Wednesday, by Thursday night the power outages returned
14ymedio, Mercedes García, Sancti Spíritus, 31 May 2024 — Blackouts returned to the city of Sancti Spíritus this Thursday night. During the day, residents could not believe what they were experiencing: a day without power outages. But their joy did not last long.
“We went out into the street to bang on pots and pans because we had been without electricity for hours and hours,” a resident of the Camino de La Habana neighborhood, located in the southern part of the city of Sancti Spíritus and with a population of around 2,000, tells 14ymedio. “That was tremendous because people went out into the streets, they didn’t stay inside their houses. Even the old people came out with their pot and spoon.”
“The police arrived a while later and took some of the arrested people away. They grabbed the younger men and put them in the truck,” explains the source, who prefers anonymity. “There are still about 50 arrested, and the families are going crazy asking if they are going to be released or if they are going to be put on trial. The entire neighborhood is very upset with this, because the only thing we did was protest with the pots and pans.”
The resident assures that, for fear of greater reprisals, the participants in the protest concentrated on the pot-banging and shouting “Electricity!” and “Food!”, the words that have become a constant in protests of this type that have occurred in Cuba in recent years and that reflect popular dissatisfaction with blackouts, shortages and inflation.
“It was very exciting, because they were taking away the arrested people but those of us who were left continued banging on our pots. We were not afraid because they couldn’t arrest us all”
“It was very exciting, because they were taking the arrested people but those of us who were left continued continued banging on our pots. We were not afraid because they couldn’t arrest us all. My neighbors realized that they couldn’t fit the entire neighborhood into that Police truck,” recalls the man from Sancti Spiritus. “They took them to the Vivac [detention center for awaiting processing] in Sancti Spíritus,” he says.
The protest resulted in the city of Sancti Spíritus waking up the next morning with a strong police operation. “I left my house on my way to work and I started seeing police on the corners, patrols everywhere, and it was a neighbor who told me that there had been a protest and that the city was occupied,” a woman from Sancti Spiritus tells this newspaper. She works in a state company linked to the Ministry of Agriculture.
“When I arrived at work, my boss, who lives on Camino de La Habana, gave me more details. He says that it was impressive, that the police patrolled the neighborhood and people did not get out of the middle of the street, they were proving their strength with their pots,” explains the woman. “He says that he did not leave his house for fear of losing his job, but that he banged his pot in the yard.”
“In the office we had a blackout all morning but, surprise, this Thursday throughout the day they did not turn off our power in that area or in any of the city of Sancti Spíritus,” she explains. “People couldn’t believe it, I didn’t even get to enjoy the lack of blackouts, because I had the feeling in my stomach that at any moment they would knock out the power. I was stunned, I couldn’t figure out anything, I couldn’t function with electricity all the time, because I’m used to the fact that there almost always isn’t any.
“I was stunned, I couldn’t figure out anything, I couldn’t work with electricity all the time, because I’m used to the fact that there is almost always no electricity.
Several residents in the city also detail that they saw new police patrols in circulation that they had not previously seen on the city streets. Internet access was also reduced to a minimum to prevent the details of the protests on Camino de La Habana from becoming known through social networks. So far, no video of the demonstration has been released.
“The next day after the protest, a car from the Electric Company arrived to change a transformer, photos were taken and everything,” adds the neighborhood resident. “A clown, because everyone knows that the problem of blackouts has nothing to do with an electric pole or a transformer, but rather that they are taking away our electricity because there is no generation.”
On the Facebook page of the Sancti Spíritus Electrical Company, two images of a worker standing on a ladder and an old Soviet-made truck in the foreground, are enough for the state energy monopoly to use the hashtag #SanctiSpíritusEnMarcha, an irony If we are talking about a district where the most recent march was a popular protest, silenced and repressed.
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