A call to protest in Cuba For civil rights failed this Monday when most Cubans stayed away from the streets before the repression of the communist regime that has controlled the island for more than 62 years, which seemed to end a confrontation with dissidents the same day that the country reopened its borders to tourists.
Dissidents have been calling for months on social media for a “Civic March for Change” following the July 11 street protests, the largest anti-government demonstrations in the country in decades.
The communist government has banned the demonstrations planned for Monday, saying they are part of a destabilization campaign by the United States, which maintains a Cold War-era embargo against Cuba. US officials have rejected it.
However, dissidents on social media continued their calls for them to protest at three in the afternoon local time (2000 GMT) in ten Cuban cities, from the capital Havana to Pinar del Río and Guantánamo, in the extreme east.
Almost three hours later, there was little sign of organized protests in Havana or elsewhere, although dissidents showed videos of small groups dressed in white in scattered marches.
In Havana, there was an increase in plainclothes and uniformed police officers, although the streets seemed quieter than normal as some parents left their children at home out of fear following rumors of demonstrations.
“I decided to keep my six-year-old son at home from his first day at school because I was worried something might happen,” said state worker Jennifer Puyol Vendesia of Havana.
Officials at Havana’s international airport said they expected flights to triple this week, from around 51 a week to 170, as tourists arrived to enjoy the island’s white sand beaches and warm waters.
Cuba has vaccinated almost its entire population with homegrown injections and maintains that cases of COVID-19, as well as deaths, have drastically decreased, allowing it to reopen its borders to tourism.
Demonstrations planned on Sunday by a Facebook group called Archipelago, which has spearheaded the call, failed under pressure from authorities and government supporters.
Supporters of the Cuban regime surrounded the home in Havana of Yunior García, a playwright and leader of the Archipelago, on Sunday to prevent him from marching, as he had planned, to show support for the peaceful demonstrations.
Garcia’s neighborhood was quiet and his building was still covered in Cuban flags that government supporters had hung from the roof the day before, according to a Reuters witness. Garcia, nor his wife, responded to phone calls Monday.
Wrong day
The announced date of the protests, the same day tourism and schools are reopened, struck a chord with the communist regime, according to independent political analyst Carlos Alzugaray.
The also former diplomat said that the protest leaders may have miscalculated the date of the marches.
“I think Archipelago chose the wrong day. People are worried about the reopening of the economy and the return to normality, ”he said.
State security and pro-dictatorship groups monitored the homes of high-profile dissidents since early Monday, according to rights groups and reports on social media.
On Monday morning, Saily González, another Archipelago leader, posted on Facebook a video of regime sympathizers calling her a traitor and warning her not to march in front of her home in Santa Clara, in the center of the country.
The Castro regime has not commented on those incidents, but says the protests violate Cuba’s 2019 constitution.
The Cuban regime was criticized by human rights and press freedom groups on Saturday after withdrawing the press credentials of five journalists from the Spanish news agency EFE before the protests, but quickly reinstated two of them.
The Secretary of State of the United States, Antony Blinken, condemned on Sunday the “intimidation tactics” of the Government of Cuba before the march announced for Monday and promised that Washington would seek to “settle accounts” for the repression.
Meanwhile, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez asked on Twitter that the United States stay out of Cuban affairs.
“You can see on our streets that none of this has happened,” Rodríguez added later in a television broadcast, saying that the Cuban people had chosen not to participate in the protests despite calls from US officials and politicians.
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