- A week after the unprecedented anti-government protests in communist Cuba, the apparent calm seems to have returned to the island.
- But experts told AFP that unless people see their economic situation and political rights improve significantly, dissatisfaction will continue to heat up.
- The analyst looks at what might happen in the future.
With the shouts of “We are hungry”, “Down with the dictatorship” and “Freedom”, the protests on July 11 erupted spontaneously in the town of San Antonio de los Banos, and then spread like wildfire to about 40 other places , Including the capital Havana.
The protest lasted a little more than a day, resulting in one death, dozens of injuries and more than 100 arrests.
The Cuban political scientist Rafael Hernandez foresees that the communist authorities, which once controlled all aspects of Cuban life, will now seek to identify and pay close attention to political opponents.
He said: “I hope they will closely monitor them, and if they call for action again, they will be arrested.”
Rafael Rojas, a Cuban historian living in Mexico, said that those behind the protests will go through a “neutralization process.”
“An operation has been launched to identify possible leaders.”
Rojas said this may not be enough to avoid “a new social explosion, but it may not be the scale we see”, adding that any future outbreaks may be “more localized.”
The protests were mainly due to the surge in the Cuban coronavirus epidemic and the worst economic crisis in 30 years, and people were tired of food and medicine shortages.
Three days after the demonstration, President Miguel Diaz-Canel announced measures to calm emotions and allow people to bring food and medicine into the country without paying import duties.
Hernandez said the government may take further emergency measures to alleviate the blow of the economic crisis.
But what needs to be boosted is the economy itself, especially by loosening control of private enterprises to promote growth and employment.
Earlier this year, the government expanded the number of activities that private entrepreneurs are allowed to operate and provided a temporary green light for small and medium enterprises, but only in certain industries.
The government has always been Cuba’s largest employer.
Mauricio de Miranda Palondo, an economist at the Pontifical Javieriana University in Cali, Colombia, said Havana is adopting “a slow relaxation strategy to release stress.”
But “this is a failed strategy because it does not solve the country’s problems strategically,” he added.
The Cuban government also agrees with greater political freedom.
However, after hundreds of artists and intellectuals staged a rare freedom of speech protest outside the Ministry of Culture in Havana, many people saw themselves being held at home by the police and their communications were interrupted.
The new Cuban Constitution approved in 2019 recognizes freedom of speech, public protests, and the rights of members of citizen associations, but there is no obvious way for people to claim these rights.
Rojas said that, in my opinion, “civil rights reform” is as welcome outside of Cuba as in Cuba.
One of the key factors in the rapid collapse of the Cuban economy is that the Donald Trump administration has tightened sanctions by the United States after years of appeasement and relaxation of the blockade by his predecessor, Barack Obama.
Cuba has been sanctioned by the United States since 1962, and has always wanted to relax under Joe Biden’s leadership, but did not come.
Although Biden promised during the campaign to restore some of Obama’s policies and seek normalization of relations, his administration has not yet reversed Trump’s last-minute redesignation of Cuba as a country that supports terrorism.
Havana’s response to the largest protest since the Cuban Revolution brought Fidel Castro to power in the 1950s may have hindered efforts to find better relationships—the authorities arrested dozens of people. Many are still being held.
Speaking of these incidents last week, Biden said: “Unfortunately, Cuba is a failed country and (is) suppressing its citizens.
“We will consider doing many things to help the Cuban people, but this requires a different situation or guarantees that they will not be used by the government.”
The last large-scale protest in Cuba was in 1994. These protests were also aimed at economic difficulties, but only in the capital, and were quickly suppressed by the police.
At that time, with Havana’s permission, approximately 34,000 Cubans left the island for the United States within a month.
These immigrants were welcomed in Florida in 1994, but this time, the United States said it would not accept repeating the same mistakes.
Economist de Miranda said that in any case, the coronavirus pandemic is unlikely to lead to mass immigration, and the Cuban government is unlikely to allow its citizens to evacuate on a large scale this time so as not to further anger Washington.
