Protesters angry over Cuba’s persistent blackouts and food shortages vandalized a provincial office of the Cuban Communist Party overnight Friday into Saturday, state-run media said.
The rare outburst in the town of Moron showed the depth of people’s discontent in Cuba as they endure economic hardship made worse by a US oil blockade and other pressure from President Donald Trump, who has stated openly he would like to see regime change in Havana.
The unrest was part of a new trend of protests in which people bang pots and pans at night in the street or at home to vent frustration over shortages of food, medicine and other basics and frequent rolling power blackouts that can last almost all day.
The state-run newspaper Invasor said five people were arrested in what it called an incident of vandalism in the town of Moron, 500 kilometers (300 miles) east of Havana.
The paper published a brief article on the unrest, in which it said people threw rocks at the local Communist Party office and ignited a fire in the street with furniture from the building.
“What began peacefully, after an exchange with the authorities in the area, degenerated into vandalism against the headquarters of municipal committee of the Communist Party,” the newspaper said.
Video circulating on social media, which AFP has not been able to verify, shows a small group of protesters breaking into and ransacking the party office, removing documents, computers and furniture and burning it in the street.
Protests are rare in Cuba. Some people who took part in widespread, spontaneous street rallies that broke out in 2021 over the hardship of life here and government repression were punished with prison terms of 20 years or more.
Overnight in Moron demonstrators also damaged other government buildings, Invasor said.
It said a person who was inebriated suffered a fall and is being treated in a hospital. But the NGO Justicia11, which has monitored demonstrations in Cuba since the historic ones of 2021, said this person may have been shot. It did not specify who may have opened fire.
Shots were heard in the area where the party office was attacked, the group said.
– ‘Extraordinary threat’ –
Independent media and social media posts say that Havana, which has suffered blackouts of up to 15 hours per day in recent weeks, is the epicenter of the new nightly protests although these have spread to other parts of the country, too.
Cuba’s authorities on Friday began a prisoner release negotiated with the Vatican and confirmed that talks were underway with the United States but did not say what the nature of these discussions was.
Trump has said Cuba will be “next” on his agenda after the Iran war and the US overthrow of Cuba’s top ally, Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela, in January.
Cuba relied on Venezuela for oil and Trump, who says he effectively runs Caracas, has cut off the supply.
The oil embargo has brought Cuba’s already troubled economy to the brink of collapse.
The Republican leader has placed the impoverished island under a US oil blockade, strangling its fuel supply on the basis of what he called the “extraordinary threat” posed by Cuba to the United States.
This comes on top of a six-decade-old US trade embargo.
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