A crowd of Cuban protesters stormed a Communist Party headquarters in the city of Morón overnight, ransacking the building, hurling burning objects at its walls, and setting fires in the street. Video obtained by Fox News Digital captured the sound of gunfire and a young man collapsing to the ground as bystanders screamed around him.
The Cuban regime's response: nobody was shot. A drunk man fell.
According to Fox News, five people were detained. Cuban state media denied that police gunfire struck anyone. And the protests keep spreading.
Footage from Morón, a city on Cuba's northern coast about 250 miles east of Havana, shows a large crowd gathered outside the Communist Party building as fire burns in the street. Protesters chanted "Libertad, libertad!" Moments later, gunfire rang out.
A young man appeared to collapse. People nearby screamed:
"They shot him! They're shooting! They said they wouldn't shoot, but they shot him."
The video then shows others carrying the injured man away. A separate clip captured large crowds marching through Morón's unlit streets before the unrest reached the Party headquarters.
State media outlet Vanguardia de Cuba offered a different version on X:
"The image circulating shows the scene of the protest, but it's important for the public to know the truth: no one was injured by gunfire."
The outlet added that "media manipulation seeks to sow fear and confusion among our people." State media claimed a "drunken" participant fell and was being treated at a hospital. Protesters screaming about gunfire in real time apparently qualifies as manipulation in Havana's telling.
The state-run Invasor newspaper, as reported by Reuters, acknowledged the events but framed them as a peaceful gathering that went wrong:
"What initially began peacefully, and after an exchange with local authorities, turned into acts of vandalism against the headquarters of the Municipal Party Committee."
The paper added that a "smaller group" stoned the entrance and started a fire using furniture from the building's reception area. Vandals also targeted a pharmacy and a government market in the area.
This is what Communist state media sounds like when it cannot fully suppress the story. It concedes the bare minimum, reframes the rest, and blames outside agitators. The crowd chanting "freedom" in the dark streets of a powerless city becomes a handful of vandals manipulated by foreign media.
Morón did not erupt in isolation. Over the past week, small groups of residents across Havana have banged pots in protest against extended blackouts. Cuba has faced rolling blackouts, food shortages, and renewed protests tied to the island's worsening energy and economic crisis. A recent nationwide blackout was triggered by a failure at the Antonio Guiteras Thermoelectric Power Plant, the island's largest power station.
Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel said Friday that no petroleum shipments have arrived in Cuba in the past three months. He blamed a U.S. energy blockade and said the island is running on a mixture of natural gas, solar power, and thermoelectric plants. The Trump administration has moved to curtail oil shipments to Cuba, particularly from Venezuela, one of the island's main suppliers.
Díaz-Canel also confirmed, for the first time, that Cuba is holding talks with the U.S. government. That acknowledgment alone signals how dire the situation has become. Havana does not publicly confirm negotiations with Washington unless the alternative is worse than the admission.
Cuban officials say U.S. sanctions have worsened the country's economic difficulties. That claim deserves the context the regime never provides. Cuba's electrical grid is aging and decrepit. Its largest power plant fails repeatedly. Its economy has been centrally planned into the ground for over six decades. The notion that American sanctions are the root cause of a nationwide blackout triggered by a domestic power plant failure is the kind of argument that only works when you control every newspaper in the country.
The Trump administration's pressure on Venezuelan oil shipments has undoubtedly tightened the vise. That is the point. Strategic pressure on a hostile regime 90 miles from American shores is not an accident; it is a policy. And the results are visible: a Communist government that spent decades refusing to negotiate with Washington is now, by its own president's admission, at the table.
The people of Morón marched through streets with no electricity. They gathered outside a Communist Party building and set it ablaze with the regime's own furniture. When gunfire erupted, and a young man went down, the crowd did not scatter in permanent silence. They screamed about what happened. They carried the man away.
The regime detained five people, called the injured man a drunk, and accused the media of manipulation. That is the full extent of what a Communist government can offer its people when the lights go out, and the fuel stops coming: denial, arrests, and a story no one on the ground believes.
The streets of Morón were dark, but the fires were bright enough for the cameras to capture. Sixty-seven years after the revolution, Cubans are chanting one word at the buildings where their rulers meet. Freedom.