50 people were arrested on Wednesday, by Thursday night the power outages returned
14ymedio, Mercedes García, Sancti Spíritus, 31 May 2024 — Blackouts returned to the city of Sancti Spíritus this Thursday night. During the day, residents could not believe what they were experiencing: a day without power outages. But their joy did not last long.
“We went out into the street to bang on pots and pans because we had been without electricity for hours and hours,” a resident of the Camino de La Habana neighborhood, located in the southern part of the city of Sancti Spíritus and with a population of around 2,000, tells 14ymedio. “That was tremendous because people went out into the streets, they didn’t stay inside their houses. Even the old people came out with their pot and spoon.”
“The police arrived a while later and took some of the arrested people away. They grabbed the younger men and put them in the truck,” explains the source, who prefers anonymity. “There are still about 50 arrested, and the families are going crazy asking if they are going to be released or if they are going to be put on trial. The entire neighborhood is very upset with this, because the only thing we did was protest with the pots and pans.”
The resident assures that, for fear of greater reprisals, the participants in the protest concentrated on the pot-banging and shouting “Electricity!” and “Food!”, the words that have become a constant in protests of this type that have occurred in Cuba in recent years and that reflect popular dissatisfaction with blackouts, shortages and inflation.
“It was very exciting, because they were taking away the arrested people but those of us who were left continued banging on our pots. We were not afraid because they couldn’t arrest us all”
“It was very exciting, because they were taking the arrested people bu