With the mobilization of police officers, State Security agents dressed in civilian clothes and military service recruits armed with sticks, the authorities responded this Saturday night to the popular protests on the fifth day without electricity in several municipalities of Havana. The cacerolazos and the barricades closing the streets and avenues marked the day.
On Calle Línea, in El Vedado, the residents closed the central avenue at the intersection with Calle F and on the path where vehicles travel to join the Malecón. They blocked traffic with overturned garbage cans, tree branches that fell in the winds of Hurricane Ian, which hit the island last Tuesday, and other objects.
A human cordon also got in the way, which was illuminated by public lighting although the houses around it were still without electricity, and chanted slogans such as “Turn on the power!” and “Put on the light!”, a demand that was answered a while later with the arrival of buses and trucks full of shock troops dressed in civilian clothes to counteract the protesters, as confirmed by a 14ymedio reporter at the scene of the events. facts.
“They have arrived in minibuses, trucks and buses and they were seen to be safe because of the bravado they showed,” a local resident told this newspaper. The people who blocked the passage of the vehicles withdrew towards their houses with the arrival of the official troops, who began to spread out all over the street and the surrounding roads in a threatening attitude.
“But here the people have already lost their fear, the people have already learned that if they don’t protest they don’t respect them”
“It seems that they are waiting for Criminalistics to take the fingerprints that people could have left in the garbage cans that they put in the street, but that is to intimidate,” explained another neighbor. “But here people have already lost their fear, people have already learned that if they don’t protest they don’t respect them.”
The place was completely taken over by State Security and the operation was even greater than the one deployed in that area after the popular protests of July 11, 2021. “The most interesting thing is that the only ones who are in uniform are the bosses, there are even some with three stars on their uniforms, in their typical closed cars, all of them are parked on the corners,” the woman warned.
Two blocks away there were also two buses full of repressors dressed in civilian clothes. “When the people who were in the street touching the cauldron arrived, they were sent to run in the middle of the darkness and they could not catch them. They arrived with two cage trucks. What they have brought to repress is disproportionate because among those who protested there were many old people and minors.”
This newspaper verified that several of the leaders dressed in uniform watched the videos of the protest on Linea Street on their mobile phones with the aim of locating the places where it had been strongest and trying to identify the participants. Several of them were reviewing the transmissions of the demonstration and the closure of the avenue on Facebook and guided by those images to deploy the operation of plainclothes agents.
On 31st Avenue, in the Plaza municipality, protests also took place for the second consecutive night. In a video published on social networks, dozens of people are seen moving along the road and pushing back vehicles that are trying to get through the crowd. From neighboring houses, whole families can be heard playing pots and pans and shouting in support of the protesters.
The demonstrators made a chorus to the cry of “Freedom!” and they filled the avenue from the corner of 42nd and 44th streets
Avenue 41, also in the Playa municipality -one of the most affected in Havana by power cuts- was the scene this Saturday of another popular protest very similar to the one carried out by its neighbors last Friday. The demonstrators made a chorus to the cry of “Freedom!” and they filled the avenue from the corner of 42nd and 44th streets.
Several of the neighbors confirmed to this newspaper that they saw young military service recruits deployed again, dressed in civilian clothes and with sticks in their hands, a group of confrontation to the protests that was also reported the night before and confirmed by relatives and friends of these soldiers, who were taken in trucks and buses from their military units.
In Nuevo Vedado, a cacerolazo made the vicinity of the Ministries of Agriculture and Transportation rumble, where several tall buildings remained without electricity on Saturday night in its fifth day after the passage of the hurricane. Just after the cannon shot sounded at nine o’clock at night, the sound of cazuelas began to be heard, which lasted for more than two hours.
The residents of the area, made up mostly of buildings with more than ten floors, suffered not only the lack of electricity but also the difficulties in carrying water to the higher floors through the stairs. During the cacerolazo there were also repeated cries of claim for the return of the energy service and of annoyance at the economic situation.
“I don’t have money to buy food!” shouted a neighbor of a twelve-story block on Santa Ana street between Estancia and Factor. “I have just had an operation and I have my daughter with dengue at home and we have nothing to eat!” she added. The woman complained that no state entity had helped her in this situation and she concluded her speech by emphasizing: “I give the Revolution a shit!”
Around four in the morning this Sunday, the electrical service was restored in the area around the Ministries of Agriculture and Transport
“Child who does not cry does not suck,” he warned 14ymedio another neighbor of the building known by the acronym ICRT (a building built in the 1980s by a microbrigade of the Cuban Institute of Radio and Television). “We have been without power for five days because in this neighborhood people have not gone out to protest as in others, it is time for us to wake up because all of Havana is going to have electricity except for us.”
“This is a neighborhood where there are many pro-government supporters, many officials and many opportunists,” the same man explained to this newspaper. “People are afraid of being singled out, but the cacerolazo has the advantage that it can be done from inside the house and is more anonymous. Something is something to start with.”
The cacerolazo in Nuevo Vedado spread to other nearby areas that also remained in the dark, as part of the Cerro municipality and the vicinity of Puentes Grandes. Around four in the morning this Sunday, the electrical service was restored in the area around the Ministries of Agriculture and Transport.
The reporters of this newspaper have also received reports of protests in Bauta, a municipality in the province of Artemisa, in Santiago de Las Vegas and in Guanabacoa, Havana. In the latter, the popular demonstrations included the burning of garbage and other objects in the middle of the public thoroughfare, scenes very similar to those that hundreds of residents of the area also staged last Saturday.
Some Twitter users report the arrest of at least four young protesters online, when it seemed that the protest was over.
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