MIAMI — The fires in Morón's Communist Party headquarters had barely been extinguished when residents of Havana’s Nuevo Vedado neighborhood began banging their pots again. Then came Santiago de Cuba. Then Mayarí in Holguín. By Sunday morning, what had begun as a wave of blackout protests eleven days ago had evolved into something the Cuban regime has not faced since July 11, 2021—a sustained, multi-city, ideologically explicit rebellion that is no longer just about the lights going out.
In the José Martí district of Santiago de Cuba’s Micro 9 neighborhood, residents took to the streets in the early hours of Sunday during a prolonged blackout. Independent journalist Yosmany Mayeta Labrada, who documented the unrest through audio recordings and messages sent from within the area, was explicit about what he heard:
“They were not asking for electricity, even though they had no electricity. They were not calling for water or food. They were shouting ‘down with the dictatorship’ and calling for freedom for the Cuban people.”
The Cuban regime denied that political protests had occurred—attributing what happened in Micro 9 to “a specific discontent over blackouts” and accusing social media users, primarily residing abroad, of deliberately distorting events.
The denial landed in the same news cycle as a widely circulated seven-minute video from Morón—showing a 16-year-old protester collapsing to the ground after a gunshot is clearly heard at the 5:02 mark, outside the headquarters of the Communist Party of Cuba. The Ministry of the Interior’s official explanation: the young man had fallen “while intoxicated.”
A Cuban Energy Crisis That Is Now a Political Crisis
The technical trigger for this wave of unrest was the collapse of the Antonio Guiteras thermoelectric plant in early March—the island’s most critical power generation facility. But the Cuban energy crisis that produced the Guiteras failure has been building for three months, since U.S. forces captured Nicolás Maduro on January 3, and the Venezuelan oil lifeline that powered the island was severed.
Díaz-Canel acknowledged the severity of the situation on Saturday, writing on X: “The prolonged blackouts, a result of the U.S. energy blockade, cruelly intensified in recent months, understandably cause frustration among our people.”
He simultaneously drew a hard line: “What will never be understandable, justified, or tolerated is violence and vandalism.” Five people were arrested. The municipal headquarters of the Communist Party in central Cuba was partially destroyed.
The island’s energy vulnerability had been exposed in the immediate aftermath of the Venezuela operation. “For decades, Chavez and then Maduro warned of a U.S. intervention,” one Havana resident told CNN in January. “But when it finally happened, no one was ready for it. The Venezuelans had billions of dollars to equip their military. We don’t.”
Three months later, that vulnerability has curdled into open revolt.
Díaz-Canel’s Gamble: Negotiations and a Warning
Against this backdrop, Díaz-Canel took two simultaneously contradictory positions last week—confirming U.S.-Cuba talks were underway while warning that political concessions would never be on the table.
On Friday, in a rare nationally televised press conference, he acknowledged that Cuba and Washington are in direct negotiations—with both himself and Raúl Castro personally involved—describing “a highly sensitive process” aimed at finding “solutions and spaces for understanding.”
On Saturday, as protests escalated, he issued his warning against vandalism. On Sunday, as Santiago burned heaps of trash left uncollected by state sanitation trucks that are no longer fueled, his government denied that political protests had occurred at all.
CSIS analysts writing this week observed that the Venezuela operation has fundamentally altered Cuba’s political calculus: “The United States is the decisive external actor in Cuba’s future. Russia did nothing to help the Maduro regime, and China has drawn up plans to minimize its economic losses. Havana must have noticed.”
Trump: “A Deal—or a Takeover Either Way”
President Trump has been increasingly direct about what he believes the endgame looks like. At his Mar-a-Lago estate on March 7, Trump told a group of Latin American leaders: “Cuba’s at the end of the line.”
Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One this weekend, Trump said Secretary of State Marco Rubio is actively handling Cuba negotiations—describing the outcome as potentially “a friendly takeover” while adding: “They are going to make either a deal or we’ll do it just as easy, anyway.” Senator Lindsey Graham, speaking on Fox News earlier this month, was blunter still: “This communist dictatorship in Cuba? Their days are numbered.”
Under existing U.S. law, ending the embargo requires three conditions: 1) the liberation of all political prisoners; 2) the legalization of all political parties and the press on the island; and 3) the official scheduling of free multiparty elections.
The 51 prisoner releases announced on Thursday—unidentified, unverified as political prisoners—fall short of that bar. But in the language of Cuban diplomacy, every gesture is calibrated. The question the region is asking is what comes next?
Latin America Watches—Anxiously
The developing Cuba deal has produced sharply divided reactions across the hemisphere—divisions that follow the same ideological fault lines exposed by the Venezuela operation in January.
The governments of Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico—along with Uruguay and Spain—released a joint statement in January reiterating their rejection of U.S. coercive action in the region, advocating for “strictly peaceful routes” and describing Latin America as a “zone of peace.”
The statement expressed concern about “any intent for governmental control, administration, or foreign appropriation of natural resources,” which they called “incompatible with international law.”
Such accusations sounded a familiar alarm when U.S. military pressure was mounting over Maduro in late 2025, warning that Washington is only focused on Venezuela’s riches in gold and oil.
Mexico’s former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador went further this weekend, launching a public fundraising campaign calling on Latinos across the Americas to donate to a bank account he set up to buy food, medicine, oil, and gasoline for the Cuban people—describing Cuba as a nation being “exterminated for its ideals of liberty and the defense of its sovereignty.”
By contrast, the right-leaning governments that attended the Shield of the Americas summit at Doral on March 7 have welcomed Washington’s pressure campaign. Ecuador’s Daniel Noboa celebrated the broader regional shift as a defeat for “narco-chavistas.” Paraguay’s Santiago Peña called Maduro’s fall “only good news.” Argentina’s Javier Milei framed the entire campaign as a victory of good over evil.
In Madrid, approximately 40 Cuban exiles gathered Saturday in front of the Cuban regime’s embassy in solidarity with the protesters in Morón, chanting “Freedom for the Cuban people” and “Down with the Díaz-Canel dictatorship” while singing the Cuban national anthem—the latest in a growing cycle of diaspora mobilizations across Europe that has included confrontations with Cuban diplomats and coordinated protests in Madrid, Málaga, Alicante, Barcelona, and Bilbao.
What the Region Fears
Behind the competing statements lies a shared anxiety that transcends ideology. International Crisis Group analysts have warned that Cuba’s strong military, its intelligence ties to both China and Russia, and decades of systematic repression that have extinguished organized political opposition make any clear path to regime change deeply uncertain—regardless of how much pressure Washington applies.
CSIS argues that what distinguishes the current moment from every previous U.S. pressure campaign against Cuba is the Venezuela precedent: the operation demonstrated U.S. willingness to employ coercive power to manage regimes—controlling their behavior, extracting concessions, and preserving sufficient institutional continuity to avoid collapse.
Whether that model can be applied to Cuba, which has a stronger military and deeper institutional repression than Venezuela, remains the central unanswered question.
Mexico and Venezuela face the sharpest dilemma: both were Cuba’s primary oil suppliers before Trump’s executive order. Both now face the threat of U.S. tariffs on all goods entering the American market if they resume supplying the island. For Sheinbaum’s government—managing a $600 billion trade relationship with Washington—the cost of solidarity with Havana is potentially existential.
For Rodríguez’s Venezuela, still navigating its own fragile normalization with Washington, resuming Cuban oil shipments would likely destroy the bilateral relationship it has spent ten weeks carefully building.
Sunday Night in Cuba
In Mayarí, Holguín, nearly the entire town paraded through dark streets Saturday night, the sound of pots and pans (a traditional expression of protest) carrying across the eastern village. “Strong cacerolazo in Nuevo Vedado, near Boyeros and Tulipán. We are all Morón right now,” reported journalist Yoani Sánchez, sharing video of the protests spreading through Havana’s neighborhoods adjacent to the Plaza de la Revolución.
The plaza where Fidel Castro once addressed millions. The neighborhood where the regime’s most important institutions stand. The city where Díaz-Canel is negotiating with Washington, while telling his people that political concessions will never be made.
The pots are still banging. The deal, if it comes, has not arrived yet...
