What we experienced during the demonstration in my little corner of Zamora, Marianao. Night of May 31 into the early morning of June 1, 2026.
May 31 at night. The demonstration began at 9:20 p.m. At first, it was the sound of pots and pans being banged from inside homes, because it was still drizzling after a long downpour that had lasted through the late afternoon and evening. The sound spread throughout the neighborhood, with people protesting without leaving their houses. When the rain stopped, around 11:00 p.m., there was already a large group of neighbors protesting at 124th Street and 35th Avenue.
We learned late that people were gathered there and joined when the group had grown larger. For more than an hour straight: the sound of pots and pans and people in the streets… Zamora in perpetual darkness, Zamora surrounded by light on all sides, by all the illuminated borders encircling us.
At 124th and 35th, where the demonstration was taking place, representatives of the Marianao Municipal Government appeared: the president of the Zamora-CocoSolo Council (the sadly well-known Sandra), the first secretary of the Marianao Communist Party (PCC) (far too arrogant and empowered by his position as a public official to bother identifying himself by name, as though his title itself were a name reflecting his power to wield authority), and other public officials who likewise did not bother to identify themselves (neither by name nor title), among them four other women.
They arrived accompanied by two patrol cars, uniformed National Revolutionary Police (PNR) officers, and political police officers (yes, at least three of them, whom we had already seen at previous demonstrations) dressed in civilian clothes, riding motorcycles with their respective “cosmonaut helmets,” while others wore their neighborhood-style imitation version with “rubber boots.”
The first secretary of the PCC in Marianao addressed the people while making—or appearing to make—phone calls to his superiors, saying there was no solution for restoring electricity, that an energized utility pole had fallen, that we should not expect the power to be restored, and that it was “pointless” for us to demonstrate. Some of the female public officials tried to persuade the mothers and the group of demonstrators in general to return home.
Many mothers demanded that electricity be restored so they could cook for their children. Because of the rain, many households had not even been able to light charcoal or firewood to cook food, and the night wore on with darkness and hunger…
The response of the first secretary of the PCC in Marianao was: “If the problem is food, tomorrow we’ll bring a truck with food boxes and sell them to you for 100 CUP, but we’re not turning your electricity back on now; there’s a breakdown and you’re not going to have power, so you can go home.”
Selling food to the very people they are starving, with all the food donations the Cuban State receives—seriously?! The height of governmental cynicism and shamelessness. They provoke infinite disgust and secondhand embarrassment. Equally disgusting and shameful was the officer who, even while wearing his uniform, addressed the mothers with alcohol on his breath. They do not respect themselves, nor the military ranks they swore to uphold, nor the uniforms they wear. How, then, do they expect the hungry, desperate people, living in near-perpetual darkness, to respect them?
All of us demonstrators decided to remain in the area of 124th and 35th, on the “border of light” that was at least illuminated and where we did not have to endure mosquito attacks in the darkness of our homes. “We’re not moving until the electricity is restored,” everyone said.
The mothers continued demanding the restoration of power: more than a week without being able to obtain drinking water, because without electricity to run the pumps it is impossible to refill the water tanks in this area, always the hardest hit by blackouts. More than a week suffering power cuts lasting over 16 hours, with only two or three hours of electricity a day, and only during the early morning. Food sold at impossibly high prices in a currency (USD) ordinary people do not earn. Food spoiling. Clothes that cannot be washed. Homes that resemble deserts, without water, without electricity, with no cooking method other than electricity. Hungry children, desperate mothers, elderly people without food, impossible caregiving situations…
More than an hour of protest, accompanied by cries of “Freedom!” and the clanging of pots and pans.
Around 1:00 a.m., a little boy began crying and screaming. He was asking for food: “Mommy, Mommy, I’m hungry!” he insisted… his cries carried tremendous pain. Behind the child stood a group of women representing the Marianao Municipal Government. Not one of them moved to help either the screaming child or his mother; they simply watched, impassive as always.
The boy’s mother, desperate, got up and began walking toward the patrol cars shouting: “My son is hungry, my son, my son!” Her little boy followed behind her repeating, “Mommy, Mommy, I’m hungry!” And when the mother approached the patrol cars, the police detained her, handcuffed her, and forced her into the police vehicle. Then the mothers who were nearby approached the patrol car, demanding they let her out, remove the handcuffs, that her son was crying and watching his mother being arrested: “It’s not fair, let her out!” “Release the mother, she hasn’t done anything, she hasn’t attacked anyone, she hasn’t committed vandalism!”
Since all the mothers stood in front of the patrol car, preventing them from taking her away, the vehicle backed up and drove off with the detained mother.
The little boy was left standing in the middle of the street, crying inconsolably, trembling as he watched himself being separated and his mother being taken away.
A neighbor who had once been a coordinator of the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDRs) in the Zamora Council accompanied the child to a nearby cafeteria on 124th Street, which did have electricity, to buy him at least some cookies. The owner of the cafeteria gave the boy a plate of food and some cookies. While the child ate, the neighbor asked that no one hand him over to anyone else, saying she would stay with him, and went home to change clothes so she could return and look for the boy’s mother if necessary.
My little one and I stayed with the child until he finished eating, and we accompanied him back to the group of mothers who remained in the street demanding the return of his mother. The boy trembled with fear, asking about his mother. We promised him they would bring her back, or we would all go with him to find her.
Meanwhile, the president of the Zamora-CocoSolo Council said she did not understand what had happened or why the boy’s mother had been taken away. The mothers in our group demanded that she intervene with the Police, that they return the child’s mother, and that if they did not bring her back we would go to the 6th St. Police Station to find her. The president of the Zamora-CocoSolo Council made two phone calls (she told us she was calling the chief of the 6th St. Station, but later we learned she was actually calling the head of Child Services, known as Jaquelín).
The minutes kept passing, and the mother, detained against her will, was not returned to us… Long minutes during which it had already become publicly known that one of the mothers had been arrested during the demonstration and that we were demanding she be returned to her son. After our repeated demands and declarations that we would all go to the 6th Station to find her, electricity was restored in Zamora around 1:15 a.m.
Many neighbors began coming out to the place where we were demonstrating in support of the mother and her son. Everyone demanded the same thing: “Bring back the mother! It’s not fair! She didn’t do anything! She was asking for food for her son! Her son is hungry!”
At the moment of the mother’s arrest, they left the child alone, without police custody, without any representative from the Municipal Government… The repressive forces abandoned the child, leaving him alone, crying for his mother, trembling with fright and fear, experiencing firsthand the violence of repression acting upon the bodies of mothers and children.
During those long minutes, the first secretary of the PCC in Marianao (the first time we had ever seen him at a demonstration in Zamora—clearly they “imported” that man from some distant province because, obviously, in Havana no ordinary person wants to serve those who oppress them) said it was pointless, that they had no solution, and that we were going to remain without power.
I told him: “You are harming the people. You are keeping the population of Zamora without water, without electricity, under forced insomnia. It is torture; it is sleep deprivation and denial of rest. Children suffer, mothers suffer, this whole population suffers. You are hurting us. You are hurting the people!”
His only response was: “Hurting?”
Nevertheless, the mothers remained in the same place with the child, and just as electricity was restored, the first secretary of the PCC in Marianao, the remaining patrol car, and the motorcycles carrying plainclothes paramilitaries dispersed and left the area. (We have not forgotten the cynical smiles they wore as they left, trying to project arrogance and victory, when in reality they know they are “losing.”)
We did not leave. We stayed with the child and continued demanding that the president of the Zamora-CocoSolo Council intervene and have the mother returned. At 1:56 a.m., they brought the mother back in a modern black car with a private license plate. (A switch to avoid attention, or did the patrol car that took her away have to respond to another protest on 51st Street?)
After she was finally able to embrace her son, we all returned home.
On Monday, June 1, the mother who had been detained during the demonstration complied with the summons imposed on her the previous night under threats and coercion. She was fined 30 pesos and warned that if she participated in another demonstration or protest she would be imprisoned and separated from her son, who would be sent to a “Children of the Homeland” institution and whom she would never see again. (What homeland treats its children so inhumanely? What homeland, if there is barely a country left?)
One of the intimidation tactics used against her was: “Who are you? Are you a Lady in White? How did the news get onto Facebook? Who is backing you?” She herself does not know how the image of the summons reached social media. What is noteworthy is that the repressive forces fear having cases of arrogance and abuse against the bodies of mothers and their children exposed online and, above all, they fear their names being subjected to public visibility and international scrutiny.
The only way to protect ourselves and our children is for all mothers to stand together.
During the “interview” they tried to intimidate her. The night before, they threatened to separate her from her son forever, telling her that no one was waiting for her to return home with her child. It was all a filthy lie: no mother abandoned her, and neither did we abandon her son.
I fear for her and for her little boy because in previous demonstrations she has also been summoned for “interviews” and intimidated. This neighbor is also a single mother who lives only with her son. She, too, suffers the desperation of spending sleepless nights amid heat and mosquitoes during nearly perpetual blackouts; with hunger and no way to cook because there is no gas, while LPG is sold in US dollars.
And repression falls hardest on women’s bodies, on non-white mothers, on women from marginalized, criminalized, and impoverished neighborhoods.
On Monday, June 1, we had electricity from 1:15 a.m. until 4:00 p.m.—only until four in the afternoon—and while I try to record this so that memory is not lost, we are once again without power.
Hunger, insomnia, the constant state of alert, the lack of water, all of it remains… hanging over us, over our children, over our bodies.
We return to near-perpetual blackout conditions while a group of henchmen revel in continuing to harm us. You in power are no different from the Batista regime you boast so much about having fought. You are no different from Hitler, Franco, Mussolini, or the Soviets with their gulags… You continue harming us, cursing this island, treating us as something less than animals. You are not even capable of acknowledging that you are hurting us and driving us toward extinction.
What you still fail to recognize, above all, is that your disease of arrogant ego and corrupt power—the very thing you boast about—will indeed end up destroying us, but… upon whom will you then exercise your power, your arrogance, your unchecked corruption? Have you thought about that? What good is proclaiming yourselves powerful if you leave not a single living person over whom to exercise that power?
You inspire disgust and pity because when there is no one left for you to devour, you will have to devour one another. We will not bring you down—you are bringing yourselves down.
You who misgovern are the worst plague upon this land. You are condemned… And you know it.
This article was translated into English from the original in Spanish.
