Havana/“Everything was settled through a festival of pots and pans and burning of garbage,” he tells 14ymedio an elderly resident of the Lawton neighborhood, in the capital municipality of Diez de Octubre, about the cacerolazos last Friday, during which dozens of neighbors burned garbage cans, blocked the roads and demanded the restoration of service. The neighbor proudly concludes: “This old man was able to participate in the ‘festival’, he couldn’t miss it for anything!”
According to him, the protesters’ indignation was due to the state company’s justifications for keeping the neighborhood turned off for so many hours. “Every day there was a breakage at the Apollo Station which, added to the collapse of the national electrical system, lasted much longer than patience and ‘citizen tranquility’.” In his opinion, with the restoration of service after the protest “the lie of such breaks was demonstrated.”
“Everything was settled through a festival of pots and pans and burning of garbage”
After the loud protest, the residents of Lawton finally received an oasis of light that lasted ten hours, a privilege for a city that lives between consecutive 22-hour blackouts with “lightnings” of two or three. With pride, the neighbor says: “Since the ‘festival’ we have not had power cuts and we were able to sleep peacefully all night, like babies, which had not happened since previous months.”
This diary was able to document the remains of Friday’s cacerolazo: Mounds of charred waste and burned garbage cans on Dolores Street, between 12th and 14th streets.
On this Saturday night, the Lawton neighborhood was the scene of new protests to demand electricity service. Shouts of “We want Light!” and “Freedom!”, dozens of neighbors rang pots and burned garbage cans. According to videos posted on social networks by the activist Elsa Morejonthe Police were present at the scene and recorded the protesters, a practice they use to intimidate and identify those involved in the face of subsequent acts of repression.
“Since the ‘festival’ we have not had power cuts and we were able to sleep peacefully all night, like babies, which had not happened since previous months”
Lawton’s new protest joins others registered during the last few weeks in different parts of Havana, denouncing the prolonged blackouts and the unequal distribution of electrical service. As the energy crisis worsens, reports of illegal charges and other corrupt practices within the electricity company also multiply, a problem that the Electrical Union (UNE) itself has publicly recognized.
The deterioration of the national electrical system (SEN), which has suffered five total collapses so far in 2026 – three in them only in July– and ten from the end of 2024, is once again reflected in the UNE forecasts for tonight. Although the state company announced on Saturday the reinstatement of the Antonio Guiteras thermoelectric plant – after remaining synchronized for just 26 minutes the previous day before suffering a new breakdown – and this Sunday it incorporated unit 8 of the CTE Máximo Gómez, in Mariel, it foresees a deficit of 2,032 MW for peak demand hours for a national demand of 3,200 MW, a scenario that anticipates more blackouts in much of the country.
