11J: Between gunshots and blackouts, Regla lives 11J under tension

Havana/Early this Saturday morning, five years after the protests of July 11, 2021, several shots were heard in Calzada de Regla, which has been under extreme police surveillance for several days due to the tension caused by the endless blackouts in the municipality.

At first, neighbors thought it was a car exhaust pipe. But the shots continued, they were dry, repeated, and immediately the smell of gunpowder was felt. The shots appeared to come from a blue Lada car that passed by firing shots into the air around 12:30 in the morning. Everything happened very quickly. They were heard in the vicinity of the Dbos pizzeria bar, located on Calzada de Regla, between Valdés and Cruz streets. It is a busy block, with several cafes and small retail outlets. In one of its corners is the Regla cemetery. Several people who were inside the premises came out into the street when they heard the explosions, while others asked them to remain sheltered.

In the following hours, the episode became a topic of conversation on the streets of the municipality. “Everyone who arrived asked if we had heard the shots,” says a neighbor. None of those interviewed could identify the occupants of the vehicle or specify the origin of the shots.

With dawn, the image of Regla returned to the usual one of recent months: long lines to get food, improvised fairs, street vendors and numerous uniformed police officers distributed at strategic points. In Guanabacoa, a neighboring municipality, the situation was similar.

One of the points with the highest concentration of people was a fair where tubs of mayonnaise were sold. According to several witnesses, at least five agents controlled the line, separating those who came with small children from those who waited in the general line. “It wasn’t enough to say that you had children. You had to carry the child with you to be able to get in that line,” commented a woman while a baby’s cry could be heard.

Several neighbors claimed to have witnessed scenes that illustrate the extent to which the shortage has distorted daily life. “There was coleros offering children so that other people could access the preferential line,” said one of them. Another resident said that he saw a woman hand over 500 pesos after using one of those minors to get into the line.

Meanwhile, the police presence was constant. Neighbors described patrol cars parked at important intersections, a sector chief monitoring the main traffic light and numerous uniformed officers moving through the municipality. The strange thing was to see police officers shopping like any other citizen, but without taking off their uniform. It was clear to all the neighbors that the deployment responded to the anniversary of 11J and the recent protests registered in several neighborhoods of Havana due to prolonged blackouts and lack of water.

The concern of many residents of the municipality was also focused on the arrival of night. Without electricity and with two soccer games scheduled for the afternoon and evening, it was said that the accumulated unrest could translate into new protests, as recently happened in Regla and other Havana municipalities. Some remembered that 11J happened coincidentally on the day of the Copa América final, when Argentina’s match against Brazil was expected.

Five years after the social outbreak of July 11, 2021, the atmosphere in Regla is once again marked by a mixture of scarcity, surveillance and nervousness. The early morning shots, whose authorship remains unclear, added to a day in which the memory of those protests seemed to be still present in every patrol car, in every queue and in every conversation between neighbors.