Protests: Rule is planted before the municipal government

Havana/Protest no longer happens on the corner or in the dead of night. In Regla, a Havana municipality punished by several days of blackouts and lack of water, the neighbors have decided to take the claim to the very door of local power. Dozens of people are gathered this Wednesday in front of the Government and Municipal Party headquarters, where they demand answers from officials and police deployed there.

The images taken by 14ymedio They show large groups of neighbors in front of the public building with a deteriorated façade, open windows and a doorway taken over by the crowd. On the street, under an intense sun, you can see women with children, elderly people, men in flip-flops, motorbikes, tricycles, a patrol of the Police Operational Guard and several uniformed agents trying to contain the tension.

“People are standing at the door because they can’t take it anymore,” says one of the protesters. The discomfort, he assures, has been dragging on for days. “Several places have been without power and water since Sunday,” he adds. According to testimony, the crisis worsened after the collapse of the national electrical system. “On Monday the SEN went down,” he remembers, but in some neighborhoods the electricity had already been missing.

The scene has been repeated for several days. The neighbors come out, block sections of the street, bang cauldrons and demand that someone show their face. “We close the streets and touch a cauldron. Every day,” says a resident of the area.

The fatigue is also felt in the way the neighbors confront the authorities. “As you see, people shout in the faces of the officials and the police,” explains another resident. Two agents remain next to the entrance of the building while several people argue a few meters away. A white police patrol car is parked in front of the crowd, a reminder that the state response combines promises, surveillance and repression.

The political cries were not massive, but they were present. A woman with a tired face, after several sleepless nights, shouted Patria y Vida. The slogan, which has become a symbol of protest against the Cuban regime since 2021, now appears mixed with basic demands: electricity, water, food that does not spoil, spending the night with a fan and a refrigerator that works.

The heat increases desperation. According to the report, another woman had to be transferred to the polyclinic after suffering a heart attack or cardiac episode in the middle of the situation. “There was a woman who was taken to the polyclinic with a heart attack, from empingue”says another protester, using a popular expression that sums up the level of exasperation of the neighbors.

The lack of electricity has also paralyzed daily life and small businesses. “We went through several businesses and no one has cold drinks,” says another testimony. Without power, refrigerators stop working, products are lost and even getting cold water becomes a luxury. “I told you, since Sunday,” he insists.

In the photos, the protest has the usual face of the Cuban crisis: women queuing with baskets, children waiting in the sun, elderly people leaning against the wall, men looking towards the door of the building, uniformed agents and officials who seem to listen without offering visible solutions. There are no open confrontations, but there is evident tension. The crowd is not there to carry out administrative management, but to demand answers after days of abandonment.

Regla, a historically popular and working-class municipality, has experienced the accelerated deterioration of its services in recent years. Prolonged blackouts, water shortages and precarious transportation have turned any breakdown into a total crisis. When the lack of power and the lack of water coincide, protest stops being a remote possibility and becomes inevitable.