Protesters in Cuba set fire to Communist Party building; 1 person shot

A week after uninterrupted nightly blackouts, Cubans in Morón, a city in central Cuba, took to the streets banging pots and pans Friday night chanting “Down with communism” as some of the protesters broke into the local Communist Party building and tried to set it on fire.

At least one person was appeared to have been shot, apparently by Cuban police, videos posted on social media show.

The videos show residents walking and at times running through the streets of Morón, in the province of Ciego de Avila, shouting anti-government slogans in the middle of a blackout late night Friday and early morning Saturday, lit up by the occasional portable lamp or the light on their phones.

One video shows demonstrators gathered around a police station while the police officers stand guarding the building’s entrance. Several videos show men throwing a sofa and other furniture from the upper floor of the local Communist Party building. People then burned them in a bonfire on the street.

At least two video shows people trying to set the building on fire. In one of the videos a woman can be heard yelling “Burn it!,” followed by an expletive.

In a longer video shot from a closer angle, protesters are seen throwing furniture and documents from the Communist Party building into the bonfire. One protester wrapped himself in a Cuban flag and later climbed into a nearby pole waving it. One person is heard yelling, “Burn it,” referring to the flag, but another quickly replied: “No, don't burn it because that’s ours, that’s our freedom.”

Then in a chilling turn, two men set fire to palm branches and threw them into the building, while people nearby chanted “Freedom.” That’s when one single shot can be heard on the video, followed by someone saying, “They hit him.” Someone, unclear whether a man or a boy, is seen fallen on the pavement and people quickly gathered around him, then carried him away to seek help. A few frames in the video show the person bleeding in one leg.

“They shot him,” one man is heard saying. “And they say they don’t shoot people,” the man added in reference to Cuban authorities. The man later said police officers had been “hiding” nearby.

The video does not show the exact moment in which the person was shot nor who did it. It is not clear from the videos if the person shot is an adult or a minor.

A second video shows the person who was shot with an improvised tourniquet on his right leg being carried away on a motorcycle.

On Saturday morning, the local state newspaper, Invasor, said authorities were investigating the “vandalism.”

“At midnight on Saturday, a group of people, mostly residents of the El Vaquerito neighborhood, marched through the streets of Morón, in the northern part of Ciego de Ávila province, protesting primarily the electricity situation and access to food,” the newspaper said in a publication on Facebook.

“What began peacefully, and after an exchange with local authorities, escalated into vandalism against the headquarters of the Municipal Party Committee. A smaller group of people threw stones at the building’s entrance and started a fire in the street, burning furniture from the reception area,” the story added. “Preliminary reports, based on social media posts, indicated that other establishments were also damaged, including a pharmacy and a Tiendas Caribe store.”

The official media outlet reported that five people were in custody. It did not mention the person shot but added that one individual “who had fallen while intoxicated was being treated at the Roberto Rodríguez General Hospital.”

The events in Morón cap a week in which Cubans around the country and especially in Havana have been staging cacerolazos, as the banging of pots is known all across Latin America, demonstrating against the government and their living conditions.

Just on Friday morning, Cuba’s leader, Miguel Díaz-Canel, had called on the population to be more understanding and not blame the government for the blackouts, which he said were the result of President Donald Trump’s blockade of oil supplies to the island.

Blackouts have long been a problem in Cuba, which has a crumbling energy infrastructure and had been reselling subsidized Venezuelan oil for cash before Trump halted oil supplies from Venezuela and Mexico to press the government to negotiate changes to its economic and political system. On Friday, Díaz-Canel finally admitted in a nationally televised appearance that the two governments are engaged in talks, after initially denying it.

But he did not speak of significant changes nor mention any plan to improve the current situation. Under his government, Cuba’s economy has hit rock bottom and a humanitarian crisis was already raging when the cutoff of oil supplies left the country without fuel.

In the past, the Cuban government has cracked down on protesters and hundreds of people are still imprisoned for demonstrations like the one that took place in Morón. Cuban laws severely punish any criticism or protest against the government.

Amid talks with the U.S., the Cuban government said that as a gesture to the Vatican it would release 51 prisoners, several of whom are believed to be protesters who took part in islandwide demonstrations on July 11, 2021.