Cuba: Children, Women and Children Protest With Human Chains Across Havana Highway

A large number of mostly women and children formed an human chain outside Havana on Tuesday, to protest poor living conditions on the island, as well as worsening power cuts, due to the corrupt and mismanagement by Cuba’s communist government. The news site Cubanet reported Tuesday.

Eyewitness Video of the Protest posted by Rosa Maria Paya showed many Cubans (mostly women, children and teenagers) formed a chain to close sections of a Havana-area highway on August 2.

SUCEDIENDO AHORA
El pueblo esta intentando cerrar la autopista a la altura del primer anillo de La Habana y estan exigiendo ver a Diaz-Canel.

Atencion, Castro y Canel, hay muchos ninos, no repriman! #SOSCUBA pic.twitter.com/K2m9Avzbqo

— Rosa Maria Paya A. (@RosaMariaPaya) August 2, 2022

Cubanet explained the reasons protestors tried to increase awareness by closing down the highway on Tuesday. He wrote, “In Cuba, protests have multiplied due to frequent power outages and shortages of food, medicine and housing [and] the repression of the basic rights .”

Cuban authorities detained many of the women involved in Tuesday’s highway protest hours after the demonstration, forcing them to gather inside a nearby public school, the Madrid-based newspaper Diario de Cuba revealed.

” The mother and daughter of Cuba who blockaded a road in Arroyo Naranjo (Havana) on Tuesday, ended up at a primary school where they were taken to the authorities to “address” their claims, the newspaper reported.

Cuban authorities told local media that the women had blocked traffic on a public road, which is an illegal act in many parts of the world, including in the U.S. The authorities did not say if they planned to arrest the protesters but did mention that they had deployed “several officials and law enforcement officials” to the scene of the demonstration, according to Diaro de Cuba.

The newspaper also revealed Wednesday that a Cuban journalist named Jose Raul Gallego was detained by Cuban authorities. He streamed the protest on his cellphone.

Cubans suffer from continuous blackouts that are directly due to the aging power grid of their island country. Cuba has been pulled into poverty in recent years by the corrupt hands of Havana’s communist regime, which is responsible for severe economic mismanagement and plundering of state coffers. Havana is unable to make basic repairs on its state grid, which would help reduce or eliminate power outages. This shows the government’s financial ineptitude.

These blackouts have been well-established, but they’ve gotten worse in recent weeks. This has forced Cubans into the streets demanding relief. This week, the latest power outages were widespread as evidenced by protests across both western Havana and eastern Santiago de Cuba. These cities are located on different sides of the Caribbean island.

“Residents of eastern Santiago de Cuba, the nation’s second-largest city, took up the streets to protest, espousing chants against the Castro regime such as ‘basta ya‘ (enough), ‘pongan la corriente, pinga‘ (“turn on the electricity, damn it!’), and ‘Diaz-Canel, singao‘ (‘asshole Diaz-Canel,’ a reference to the island’s figurehead president Miguel Diaz-Canel),” Breitbart News reported of demonstrations that occurred on August 1.

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