The Cubans banged their pots again this Tuesday night against the prolonged blackouts suffered. In San Antonio de los Baños, where the protests began on July 11, 2021, cacerolazos were heard in the neighborhoods of Hospital, El Palenque, La Punta and La Placita, among others.
“After ten hours without electricity, we had to have light between eight and eleven at night, but they cut off the service again at ten or so,” he explains to 14ymedio María de los Ángeles Alfonso, a resident of San Antonio, who joined the demonstration when “the sound of pans began to be heard in the distance.”
“I went out with mine and we began to shout that they put the current back on, we also shouted ‘freedom’. Shortly after, some civilians arrived on a motorcycle and asked us to enter the house,” he details.
Officials told residents that they were “pleasing the enemy and the empire,” but the warnings did not persuade them to go into their homes and stop the cacerolazo. “I told them that for me the enemy was the one who wouldn’t let me lead a normal life,” says Alfonso.
“I told them that for me the enemy was the one who wouldn’t let me lead a normal life”
Despite being threatened with consequences if they persisted, “no one entered, but they continued to play,” says Alfonso. “We had another blackout at dawn and these are the holy hours in which the power has not been removed. So demanding works.”
Through social networks, the usual medium in these cases, some videos were published where you can hear, in complete darkness, the beating of metals. The reports also include a cacerolazo this Tuesday night in the Beijing neighborhood in Güira de Melena, the third protest in less than a week in this municipality of the province of Artemisa.
To the cry of “Homeland and life!”, dozens of residents in the city of Manzanillo, in the province of Granma, also took to the streets to protest this Tuesday against the power cut. The demonstration forced the authorities to reinforce the police presence in the surroundings of the Government headquarters, as reported on social networks by residents of the place.
This demonstration joins the already numerous ones that have taken place in recent days in various places on the Island, such as Saint ClareBejucal, HolguinHundred fires, Santiago de Cuba or Pinar del Rio.
As a result of these protests, a total of 57 people have been arrested, 33 of them still in police custody, according to a statement from Justice 11J posted on his Facebook page on Tuesday.
“Although the new events have been mostly peaceful (we have only verified damage to property), we note the escalation of state violence”
The legal platform, created to follow up on the hundreds of defendants after the demonstrations in July of last year, registers up to 59 protests on the island due to power cuts since June 14.
Similarly, since they published their first report on the subject, on August 4, until this Tuesday, the organization recorded 15 more protests.
“Despite the fact that the new events have been mostly peaceful (we have only verified damage to property), we note the escalation of state violence,” they denounce in their text, which details that there was “intervention by repressive forces to contain concentrations” on August 5th in the marti park and on the 9th in the La Esperanza neighborhood, both in the city of Cienfuegos, and on the 8th in the Alcides Pino neighborhood, in Holguín.
In La Esperanza, in addition, “users reported that protesters were beaten and that a pregnant woman was detained.”
Similarly, they warn that in San José de las Lajas (Mayabeque province), where they verified cacerolazos on August 1 and 12, agents from the Ministry of the Interior threatened “with years in prison” those who demonstrate publicly.
Justice 11J has had access to two orders for the imposition of precautionary measures for the crimes of public disorder and contempt issued by the Municipal Prosecutor’s Office of Palmira (Cienfuegos) and which include information on 16 people, 12 with a provisional prison measure.
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