2021 Cuban protests
A series of protests against the Cuban government and the Communist Party of Cuba began on 11 July 2021, triggered by a shortage of food and medicine and the government's response to the resurgent COVID-19 pandemic in Cuba. The protests were the largest anti-government demonstrations since the Maleconazo in 1994. Protesters' motivations included the resentment toward the Cuban government's authoritarianism and curbs on civil liberties, the government's COVID-19 pandemic lockdown rules, and the failure to fulfill their promised economic and political reforms. The poor state of the Cuban economy also called for major protests all over the country. Cuban dissidents have placed the responsibility for these problems on the government's economic policies and abuse of human rights.
Many international figures called for dialogue, asking that the Cuban authorities respect the protesters' freedom of assembly and peaceful demonstrations. Protesters abroad called for the United States to provide humanitarian aid to help the citizens. One person was confirmed dead during a clash between protesters and police. The dissident organization of Cuba recorded an estimate of five deaths.
The Cuban government responded to the demonstrations with a crackdown, making hundreds of arrests and charging at least 710 Cubans with crimes, including sedition. Some demonstrators were given lengthy prison sentences in trials. These government acts were criticized by Amnesty International, activists, and families as unfair. As a result of the protests, the Cuban government lifted some import restrictions, and the United States government imposed new sanctions on Cuban officials.
Background
In 2020, the economic situation in Cuba worsened. The Cuban economy contracted by 10.9% in 2020, and by 2% in the first six months of 2021. The economic crises emerged from a combination of factors, including reduced financial support from Cuba's ally Venezuela, the United States embargo against Cuba and United States sanctions, and the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic, which hit the industry of tourism in Cuba and led to a decrease in remittances from Cubans abroad. Currency reform, which limited Cuban pesos exchange for United States dollars because the government needed the reform package to finance imports, led to soaring inflation, with rates estimated to be 500%. The economic situation has been exacerbated by sanctions, and some observers have blamed inefficiencies of Cuba's Soviet style-centrally planned economy, and a lack of reforms that other Communist states have taken. Pavel Vidal, a former Cuban central bank economist who teaches at Javeriana University in Colombia, stated that reforms in Cuba "do not depend on the embargo, and the embargo should be eliminated unilaterally, independently from reforms in Cuba. Both cause problems." The Cuban government has blamed the crisis on the trade embargo and its tightness as well as the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic. According to Lillian Guerra, professor of Cuban history at the University of Florida, the food shortages and high prices were the result of government spending money on building hotels and tourists facilities. According to The Guardian, they were the result of United States sanctions and the COVID-19 pandemic.Deteriorating economic conditions led to reductions in Cubans' standard of living, shortages of food and other basic products, a shortage in hard currency, and persistent power outages. Promised economic reforms, which according to NBC News' Carmen Sesin were needed and were another cause of discontent alongside the embargo, did not materialize, in part because of the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic according to the Cuban government. Cuba was not eligible for free COVID-19 vaccines from the COVAX program since it was not considered a low income economy. It decided not to buy vaccines from overseas and instead, developed its own: Soberana 02 and Abdala. The Miami Herald and The Wall Street Journal described the vaccine rollout process as delayed and slow, and said it angered some Cubans and prompted their calls for more vaccines. According to international trackers, at the time the protests had broken out, Cuba had administered 64.3 doses per 100 people, the 6th highest rate in Latin America, and about 15% of the Cuban population was fully vaccinated. In 2021, COVID-19 cases began to surge especially in the Matanzas Province, and the situation was further aggravated by the shortage of medicines and food. Cuba responded by deploying more doctors to the province.
For many Cuban-Americans, the protests were fuelled by dissatisfaction with lack of civil liberties, such as freedom of expression, in Cuba's tightly controlled government, which The Washington Posts Anthony Faiola described as "an authoritarian government struggling to cope with increasingly severe blackouts, food shortages and a spiking coronavirus outbreak", with protesters "demanding an end to the 62-year dictatorship" according to The Wall Street Journal. It exerts tight control using its intelligence, police, and security apparatus, which has been described by analysts as a police state that has provided intelligence support to allied governments, such as Nicaragua and Venezuela. The government's curbs and clampdowns on Cubans' civil liberties has prompted resentment. For Sesin, Cuba has received praise for providing its citizens of important primary care and basic needs, but the government also limits their freedom in several ways, such as controlling food, internet, and wages prices, and having a lack of freedom of assembly, freedom of expression, and multi-party elections. Measures adopted by the government during the COVID-19 pandemic, such as closed borders and no tourism, have also been praised for having reduced the number of COVID-19 infections but were very strict and did not help the economy in such times of crisis.
Increased use of social media also mobilized participants in the demonstrations; internet access in Cuba began to surge in 2008, and 3G mobile phone service came to the island in 2019, leading to widespread adoption. Earlier in 2010, USAid contactors began working on ZunZuneo, a Cuban Twitter-like social media network, planning to encourage Cubans to organise "smart mobs" that could "renegotiate the power balance between the state and society", but the project was ended in 2012. The use of VPNs spread, as people have used them "to access anti-Castro news websites blocked by the state, but also to make payments via PayPal, to send files through WeTransfer, or to play Pokémon GO – all services otherwise blocked by US sanctions."
Due to the evolving crises, a social media campaign using the hashtags SOSCUBA and SOSMATANZAS was initiated to collect money, medical materials, food, and other supplies to be sent to Cuba. Various international figures such as Don Omar, Ricardo Montaner, Alejandro Sanz, Nicky Jam, J Balvin, Daddy Yankee, Becky G, and Mia Khalifa joined the request. The Cuban government recognized the crisis describing it as "very complex" but rejected a proposed humanitarian corridor and described the campaign as an attempt to misrepresent the situation. The Cuban government set up a bank account to receive aid and said that it was open to receive donations, although the designated account is in a Cuban bank under United States sanctions. According to the Miami Herald, the Cuban government has historically refused or seized aid coming from Cuban exiles. During the protests, as the government shut down access to several social media websites, over one million protesters began using the tool Psiphon.
Protests
11 July
On 11 July 2021, at least two demonstrations emerged in San Antonio de los Baños, near Havana, and Palma Soriano, in the province of Santiago de Cuba, singing the song "Patria y Vida", which inspired the protests according to Nancy San Martín and Mimi Whitefield. Protests spread to at least 50 cities across the country. The song's name is an inversion of the Cuban Revolution motto Patria o Muerte. Videos of protesters singing slogans of "Down with Communism", "Freedom", and "We are not afraid" were broadcast on social networks, in addition to protesters demanding vaccines and an end to repression, which was aggravated by the economic crisis and the pandemic. Opposition media outlets such as Radio y Televisión Martí have published social media videos of protests in Malecón, Havana, Santiago de Cuba, Santa Clara, Ciego de Ávila, Camagüey, Bayamo, Guantánamo, San José de las Lajas, Holguín, and Cárdenas. According to Orlando Gutierrez-Boronat, an exiled dissident of the Assembly of the Cuban Resistance, there were protests in more than fifteen cities and towns in Cuba. Gutiérrez asked the United States government to lead an international intervention to prevent protesters from being "victims of a bloodbath". The San Isidro Movement called on the protesters to march to Malecón. Writing in Slate, Baruch College professor Ted Henken suggested that the Cuban demonstrators' use of the Internet to mobilize and publicize the protests showed "that the Internet can still be a force for democracy", and wrote that "in authoritarian contexts like Cuba, where the government has long since monopolized the mass media and transformed journalism into political propaganda, access to unfiltered channels of information and communication can indeed shift the balance of power in small but powerful ways."Cuban president and First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba Miguel Díaz-Canel said that the United States embargo against Cuba and economic sanctions were responsible for the conditions that led to the unrest. He urged government-supporting citizens to take to the streets in counter-protest to respond to the demonstrations, saying in a special television broadcast: "The order to fight has been given — into the street, revolutionaries!" The government called the protests counter-revolutionary. Younger Cubans comprised the majority of protesters, while some members of older generations responded to demonstrations, assisting Cuban authorities.
Following Díaz-Canel's statements, about 300 government supporters arrived at El Capitolio; the Miami Herald reported that one Associated Press cameraman was assaulted by these counter-protesters, while a separate AP photographer was injured by police. AP photographer Ramon Espinosa was detained by authorities as well. San Antonio residents reported that the police repressed protesters and detained certain participants. In videos circulated on social media, people were seen throwing stones at police, while reports of authorities beating demonstrators were heard. By the evening, protests had dissipated.
Cuban journalist Yoani Sánchez reported that after the protests on 11 July some were injured and there were hundreds of detentions. José Miguel Vivanco, director of the Human Rights Watch's Americas division, said: "This is pretty massive. My sense is that this is a combination of social unrest based on a lack of freedoms, and covid, and economic conditions. The lack of access to electricity. The blackouts.... People are screaming for freedom." Cuban journalist Abraham Jiménez Enoa tweeted from Havana: "Cuba is an island ruled by the military for 62 years. Today there is no food, no medicine, and people are dying like flies from Covid. People got tired. This country is losing even fear." The small class of private entrepreneurs in Cuba, such as Nidialys Acosta, said that protests in the middle of a pandemic were not the solution and do not agree with Diaz-Canel inciting the revolutionaries to the streets either. The Washington Post quoted Acosta as saying: "I could not believe the magnitude. People are tired. It has been aggravated in recent weeks by blackouts. There are blackouts of six hours in a row in the countryside."