Among the accused is the writer and independent journalist José Gabriel Barrenechea
EFE/14ymedio, Havana, 24 September 2025 — The Cuban Prosecutor’s Office is seeking up to nine years in prison for six Cubans for peacefully banging pots and pans — a cacerolazo — in protest of blackouts during a trial that began Wednesday in the Villa Clara provincial court.
The defendants, including Cuban intellectual and independent journalist José Gabriel Barrenechea, are accused of public disorder, according to the final conclusions of the Prosecutor’s Office’s brief, to which EFE has had access.
Five of the defendants have been in pretrial detention since a few days after the events in question occurred on 7 November 2024.
The trial began in the afternoon, with the defendants’ statements. Activists and family members denounced the arrest of longtime Cuban opposition figure Guillermo ‘Coco’ Fariñas as he was traveling to the courthouse to attend the hearing.
According to the prosecution’s brief , the defendants—with three cauldrons “that could not be seized”—led a cacerolazo in the town of Encrucijada (central Cuba), taking advantage of “the power outage caused by the country’s energy crisis.”
The action, with “incessant blasts” and “high decibels,” was accompanied by repeated shouts of “Turn on the power, we want power.” This, the Prosecutor’s Office argues, resulted in “disturbing the public peace” and “obstructing vehicle traffic on public roads.”
The Prosecutor’s Office is requesting six years in prison for Barrenechea.
With this description, the Prosecutor’s Office is requesting nine years in prison for two of the defendants, six for Barrenechea, five for another, and four for a final suspect. For the sixth defendant, they are seeking five years of restricted liberty.
The six defendants are all men, originally from Encrucijada, and range in age from 26 to 53. None have a criminal record.
Barrenechea was arrested a few days after the protest. His request to be released pending trial was rejected, and he was only allowed to leave prison to attend his mother’s funeral (but not to visit her, as she was already seriously ill).
On June 25, the Prosecutor’s Office submitted a request to the Provincial Court of Villa Clara for a six-year prison sentence for the journalist, a contributor to this newspaper. The document details that Barrenechea’s “crime”—they initially sought to charge him with sedition—during the peaceful demonstrations after 48 hours without electricity in Encrucijada, was shouting “Turn on the power, we want the power,” in unison with other protesters, and urging “those present not to desist from their actions.”
The document adds that the journalist “shows total disaffection for the revolutionary process and its top leader.” It also notes that he is a citizen with no criminal record, but that he “associates with people of poor moral character and social conduct, and has no recognized employment relationship.”
The document adds that the journalist “shows total disaffection for the revolutionary process and its top leader.”
For the past 10 months, Barrenechea has been imprisoned at La Pendiente Penitentiary in Santa Clara. The facility is “known for its extremely overcrowded conditions and for housing all types of prisoners,” according to the Foundation for Pan-American Democracy’s Complaints Center. His stay there has represented “a serious risk to his life,” the organization emphasized in a statement days after the journalist’s arrest.
While in prison, the journalist suffered the death of his mother, Zoila Esther Chávez, who depended on him, and was only allowed to attend her funeral for an hour and a half.
Amnesty International’s Cuba researcher, Johanna Cilano, addressed the trial on social media this Wednesday. “Protest is a right; no one should be imprisoned simply for exercising their human rights,” she asserted.
Cilano linked this case to two other recent trials in Cuba, such as the one following the Bayamo protests of March 2024, in which 15 people were sentenced to up to nine years in prison for protesting.
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