The crisis does not give Cuba a truce two years after unprecedented protests

Two years after the anti-government demonstrations in Cubafor which nearly 500 people have been sentenced, the communist island continues to be plunged into a deep economic crisis and social that fuels discontent, but also repression against dissident voices.

The streets of Havana remained calm this Tuesday, with its inhabitants dedicated to their usual daily activities, AFP confirmed.

On July 11, 2021, thousands of Cubans had poured into the streets shouting “We are hungry” and “Down with the dictatorship”after months of strict confinement due to the pandemic and a critical economic situation in the absence of tourists, in unprecedented protests since the 1959 Revolution.

Among the more than 1,500 detained for those marches, almost 700 are still in prison, according to the NGO Justicia 11J, now based off the island. According to authorities, about 500 prisoners have received sentences, some of up to 25 years.

The government again accused the United States on Tuesday of having orchestrated the marches to overthrow him.

“The United States directed and incited acts of violence and provocations against the authorities in Cuba. A campaign was set up to generate for weeks the image of a country in social crisis”said the Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs, Carlos Fernández de Cossío, on Twitter.

For his part, the Secretary of State of the United States, Antony Blinken, urged in a statement to “the international community to join our demand that the Cuban government release hundreds of unjustly imprisoned students, journalists, artists, youth and others.”

“Become a magician”

Although President Miguel Díaz-Canel assured a year ago that the country of 11 million inhabitants would exceed the “complex economic situation”Cuba continues to struggle to get out of the quagmire.

Uncontrollable inflation, the slow recovery of tourism, the drop in sugar production, high international prices that exacerbate shortages, the tightening of US sanctions and record emigration are internal and external factors that have combined to lead the country to its worst crisis since the 1990s.

For Yaneysi, a 31-year-old handicraft vendor, “The economic situation is as it was before July 11, perhaps worse, because there is less, less food, less medicine, sky-high prices.”

“You have to become a magician to get what you need”he tells AFP.

Faced with these difficulties, the government accelerated the economic opening, which is essentially state-owned, towards the private sector, which alleviated certain deficiencies, but increased inequalities due to high prices.

Daily activities were carried out normally this Tuesday in Havana, under the observation of countless state security agents in civilian clothes stationed in many streets, AFP confirmed.

Yoani Sánchez, a journalist and founder of the news site 14 y medio, said in a tweet that “A political police operation has been deployed very early in the morning” below his building to prevent him from going outside.

While the opponent Manuel Cuesta Morúa said he was “without internet and with a patrol” in front of your home.

Hunger strike

Despite the harsh sentences imposed on the July 11 protesters, Cubans, trapped in a very precarious material situation, are less hesitant to express their discontent with the authorities.

In 2022, sporadic demonstrations against power cuts broke out in several provinces and in Havana. In May, dozens of people demonstrated against the shortage of food and medicine in Caimanera, a small town 1,000 km east of Havana.

“The protests are a reflection of this drop in credibility” of the government, which is making an effort to propose solutions to the crisis, said sociologist Rafael Hernández.

Opponents and activists regularly denounce arbitrary arrests, harassment or pressure to leave their country. Justice 11J recently launched a campaign to alert about the arrest of “ten Cuban activists and dissidents” who remain imprisoned, under a “new wave of repression”.

Young activists who were the face of the mobilization, among them the playwright Yunior García and the art historian Carolina Barrero, were forced to leave Cuba. Others were detained, such as the artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, sentenced to five years and who began a hunger strike on Friday.

While 15 Latin American human rights organizations, including Civil Rights Defenders and Article 19, asked the European Union and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (Celac) to “demand” to Havana “guarantee the right to protest and release” to the imprisoned protesters.

The Vatican and the European Union have also called for the release of the jailed protesters.

Source: AFP