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Cuba protests: A guide to the island’s largest unrest in over 60 years
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In early 2021, the government proposed a package of economic reforms, which raised wages but also caused prices to skyrocket. The year also began with Cuba formally devaluing its peso for the first time since the revolution that swept the late Fidel Castro to power and allowing the use of US dollars, which had been banned since 2004. The return to dollarisation, plus the lack of foreign currency liquidity, led the government to allow ‘dollar stores’, where basic necessities can be purchased in a currency other than the one in which the majority of the population's wages are paid.

Medicines, other than Cuban-made vaccines, are in short supply, and there are no painkillers available from pharmacies or medical centres. The situation became so serious last month that the government decided to accept dollars in cash. The remittance flow from overseas is a lifeline, the third-most lucrative source of revenue for the government but one that nevertheless puts an end to the idea of supposed socialist equality.

Free Internet

While Fidel Castro was in power, internet access in Cuba was almost totally restricted. It was his brother, Raúl, who paved the way for a gradual opening up by allowing some connectivity on the island.

Ever since, Cubans have used social media to denounce the regime’s missteps and abuses, and have forced the authorities to respond. Today, a large section of the population, especially young Cubans, have access to Twitter and Facebook, which, as protests in Colombia and Chile have shown, can mobilise huge support. The two social networks have become the forums of choice for Cubans who no longer believe the official pronouncements of the Soviet-style Granma newspaper. Until recently, Granma was the only source of information on the island.

In November 2020, another demonstration was organised in Cuba entirely on social networks, after the police stormed the home of young artists. On 11 July, social networks once again triggered national protests after San Antonio and Palma Soriano took the lead.

The current protests would not have been possible without the power of the internet, which the regime hastily shut down in nearly 60% of the island, even if only intermittently. The free flow of information is a threat to a regime that cannot escape its history of authoritarianism.

Abdala

The vaccine developed in Cuba has not been approved by the World Health Organization and has not been subject to verifiable clinical trials. Even so, the Cuban State Centre for Medicines, Equipment and Medical Devices (Centro Estatal de Medicamentos Equipos y Dispositivos Médicos de Cuba) claims Abdala has 92% efficacy

The problem with the Cuban vaccine is that it has no international verification and that its distribution has been quite limited so far. This means that, after Haiti, the island has one of the lowest numbers of vaccinated people in the Western Hemisphere, with potentially catastrophic implications considering the rise of the delta variant of COVID-19.

Cubans are standing up, for the first time in decades, to demand their rights and the freedoms they have long been denied. Many leaders across the region have joined the European Union in calling on the US to lift the embargo on Cuba and to allow free trade. If internationally approved vaccines for COVID-19 are allowed into Cuba, it could be the first step along the path of a transition to democracy. That would seem to be the only way to deal with the scourge of Cuba’s political system.

Part of the Latin American and European Left refuses to recognise the evidence: Cuba is a dictatorship that has lasted too long. The Díaz-Canel government should now move away from its apparatchik logic, look past the shadow of the Castros, avoid the temptation to harshly put down the protests and give Cubans a second chance to be happy and free.

[1] Url: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/democraciaabierta/cuba-protests-a-guide-to-the-islands-largest-demonstrations-in-60-years/