A group of disgruntled residents of the city of Morón in central Cuba took to the streets early Saturday morning and destroyed the local headquarters of the ruling Communist Party. Authorities said they arrested five people in the protest, which was linked to problems with energy supplies and access to food on the island. The AP agency informs about it, TASR writes.
The Cuban government said in state media that the “vandalism” in the town of Morón, located less than 500 kilometers east of Havana, was aimed at a party building. A smaller group of people threw stones at it, took it out and set fire to the furniture. In the videos published on social networks, it can be seen that the pharmacy and the store are also damaged. “What started peacefully, after an exchange of views with local officials, turned into vandalism against the headquarters of the city’s Communist Party committee,” state-run Invasor newspaper reported.
Energy crisis in the country
The country has been struggling with increasingly frequent power outages and fuel shortages since several countries stopped sending oil to Cuba. On Friday, President Miguel Díaz-Canel said he was in talks with the United States government. For the first time, the Caribbean country confirmed speculation about discussions with the administration of President Donald Trump, as it struggles with a serious energy crisis.
Díaz-Canel said no oil shipment had arrived in Cuba in the past three months, attributing it to the US energy blockade. He added that the island currently runs on a combination of natural gas, solar power and thermal power plants.
Limitation of energy production
The Cuban authorities also reported that the depletion of fuel oil and diesel fuel led to the shutdown of two power plants and limited energy production in solar parks. The most recent power outage was caused by a broken boiler in the thermal power plant.
Similar gatherings like the one in the city of Morón have been rare in Cuba in recent years. Some participants in the large-scale protests of 2021, which also broke out as a result of difficult living conditions and government repression, received prison terms exceeding 20 years, AFP recalled.
But independent media and social media posts are now reporting that Havana, which has been experiencing power outages for up to 15 hours a day in recent weeks, is at the center of new nighttime protests that have spread to other parts of the country.
