Image Courtesy of Alexandre Meneghini/Reuters
By Emily Arama Sánchez
In writing this article, I acknowledge and am grateful for my ability to write freely on the situation in Cuba, a privilege those in Cuba do not currently have.
If you are not born in Cuba, a holiday to the island will not provide you with an experience of the reality of the Cuban system, and you may even find the recent protests confounding. But there is an intentional difference of experience. There is the tourist and the resident.
It was the prioritisation of tourism – and the money that comes with it – above the livelihoods of the Cuban people that has built up frustrations on the island. With tourism, a vital sector of the Cuban economy, essentially wiped by the pandemic, tens of thousands of Cubans lost their only access to money at a time when they needed it most.
Additionally, tourism allowed for the Cuban government to uphold a vision of Cuba which was not accurate for all Cubans. Behind the idealistic facade painted by tourism, however, were starving Cubans who were unable to access the medicine they needed in the midst of a global pandemic whilst their first lady held culinary banquets for foreign guests.
So, this time, thousands took to the streets in what started as peaceful protests in over forty cities and towns across Cuba, with unrest reaching far beyond the capital.
Image Courtesy of Yamil Lage/AFP/Getty Images
Nevertheless, unlike the ‘Maleconazo’ of 1994 where Fidel Castro famously said that “the people smashed the counter revolution without firing a single shot”, what we saw in Cuba on July 11th were devices stolen, arrests made, people disappearing, and several shots fired no matter who you were or what you were doing.
When interpreting the political situation in Cuba, it is important to always interrogate your sources. In Miami, a strong Cuban exile community – often represented by supporters of the US Republican Party – indulges and proliferates in fierce anti-Castrist and, at times, classist propaganda. By contrast, in Cuba, state-run media outlets craft equally fierce pro-government narratives. Consequently, it is vital to look beyond the scope of politics of Cuba and, instead, to acknowledge the humanitarian crisis that lies before us.
There are a host of unsubstantiated claims circulating at the moment, including ideas that these recorded protests are fake and that the problems Cubans are protesting about are new and brought about solely by the pandemic or by US economic sanctions – neither of which are true. Fundamentally, these protests are the result of an authoritarian, absolutist state.
It would be easy to say that this is the product of communism, especially since it ties smoothly into the objectives of conservative media outlets that demonise left-wing policies to scapegoat the failures of capitalism. But it is much more than that, this situation is far more complex than an ideological contest. Political theories are inadequate because each base their principles around how people act and think, qualities that at their very core are unpredictable and change across time, place, and experience. Communism has not worked in Cuba because it created a power imbalance reminiscent of the one it revolted against. Capitalism has not worked in Honduras, the world’s original ‘Banana Republic’, because it directed a country’s entire wealth and economy towards the needs of a single company – the United Fruit Company – and, nowadays, perpetuates extraordinary inequality and poverty. So, while US President Joe Biden is correct in stating that communism is a ‘failed system’ when referring to the state of Cuba, he ought not to imply that capitalism is not also a failed system.
Let us turn to the leadership in Cuba, personified by President Miguel Mario Díaz-Canel. This is not a president; this is a dictator. The role of modern governance ought to unite people in the fight for a better future – a government by the people for the people. What we have instead is an unelected government by the dictator, for the dictator. Not only has Díaz-Canel stopped information regarding Cuba’s protests from reaching other countries, but he has stopped it from reaching Cubans who may only be five metres away from it.
This is the repression that Cubans are protesting against. A lack of freedoms that plague Cuba; of individual rights to control your own destiny, of expression, of press, of thought, of fair trail, of access to social media and messaging platforms, and a lack of free and fair elections. Attempts to reach such freedoms and to scrutinise the government have been met with suppression via beatings, public shaming, detentions, surveillance, imprisonment, termination of employment, online harassment, fines, travel restrictions, and people going ‘missing’.
Moreover, Cuba’s economic strife is the fault both of the Cuban government and of the suffocating US economic embargo. Although former US President Barack Obama slightly eased this embargo, his successors, Presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden, have instead sought to tighten restrictions to further squeeze the Cuban government’s resources so as to leave it in an economic state beyond repair. The consequences of this increased US pressure have now become evident. As of January 2021, the Cuban Peso has been devalued by 2300%, food prices have gone up by 300%, and only 15% of the population have been vaccinated whilst they queue for hours to buy basic goods or even to take the bus – it is therefore unsurprising that the Cuban people would protest against a government which has done nothing to help them.
What is particularly striking about the protests in Cuba is the way in which the media has been used, weaponized and polarised in just a matter of days.
Image Courtesy of Dalberto Roque/AFP via Getty Images
The recorded response of Díaz-Canel, broadcast across Cuba, was appalling. The President denied the legitimacy of the protests and called on his supporters to fight protesters, thereby putting the whole nation in danger. He called for Cubans to fight Cubans, voluntarily or not. In doing so, he made it dangerous both for Cuban protesters and disillusioned pro-government Cubans who have now come to fear one another. There is a need for this government to accept humanitarian aid for the people of Cuba, to be transparent, and to take responsibility for its unsustainable internal errors instead of pitting the Cuban people against each other.
The rise in the prevalence of social media has meant that there have been a lot of external actors spreading misinformation on Cuba’s situation while having no real understanding of what is actually happening in the country. To fully comprehend the situation, such actors need to speak to Cubans in Cuba; a prospect which is difficult at the moment.
Nevertheless, social media has been effective in exposing the truth and validating Cuban experiences. The countless videos of Cubans marching in the streets and being beaten and taken from their homes by the Cuban military are deeply upsetting and hard to watch but they show what is actually happening. They all cohesively work as evidence to the falsehoods perpetrated by the Cuban government who claim that such scenes are fake. Therefore, the sharing and scrutinising of these videos has been a source of hope that change may come.
The critical issue with these videos is who they are being published by and for what reasons. Upon analysis of the captions and comment sections used by those posting these videos with an American flag in their account handle, are a uniquely striking demographic; Republican supporters who have leveraged Cuba’s unrest for propaganda purposes. With many urging for President Biden to do what former US President Trump would have done; to bomb Cuba and destroy communism, whilst also destroying countless innocent Cuban lives, cultures in the streets, buildings, homes; and turning Cuba into another one of the US’ monopolies. This use of Cuba’s crisis, therefore, is not only dangerous to the island’s people, but lacks humanitarian, economic and logical reasoning.
Ultimately, there are two sides to the employment of social media inside and outside Cuba. On the one hand, social media has spread an unprecedented awareness of the situation in Cuba, which is a rarity in itself. On the other hand, there lies the more emotional side, that these videos had to be taken and shared in the first place; in our homeland, the country we Cubans have pride in no matter where we go.
The extent of brutality and violence that we have seen across Cuba since the beginning of these protests is abhorrent.
Image Courtesy of Yamil Lage/AFP/Getty Images
Since, as mentioned earlier, President Díaz-Canel called for his supporters (the unrevolutionary ‘revolutionaries’) to fight the protesters, many of the nation’s most loyal Castrist ‘revolutionaries’ have interpreted this as a demand for Cubans to kill Cubans. This is not simply pro-government against anti-government either. One of the government’s most merciless tactics has been to kidnap young Cubans from their homes and recruit them into compulsory military service to fight in the streets. These are children whose families may be among those protesting. Children who would have to hold and shoot a gun against their family in the name of something they themselves may not believe in.
This is one of the reasons why military intervention would need to be reconsidered; in fighting the Cuban government, one is inevitably fighting the kidnapped and disillusioned Cubans who are not fighting out of free will.
Image Courtesy of Antena Cubana via Facebook
Up until now, the crisis in Cuba has only been made worse by the actions and intentions of the US in its foreign policy decisions.
We have seen Republicans, such as Senator Marco Rubio, lobbying President Biden for military intervention in Cuba. We have seen Democrats lobbying Biden to not miss out on this golden opportunity to bring democracy to the island. While the latter is favourable, both carry a distorted sense of US ownership of Cuba and seem to undermine their own argument: that Cubans should be masters of their own destiny. Unsurprisingly here, they feed into the historiographical pattern of the US depicted as Uncle Sam; the white capitalist nation that, with military intervention, strides non-consensually into countries which they deem to be less civilised and save them from communist foreign ruin.
What Cuba truly needs are countries who can see that this is more than politics and can give aid to Cuba as a matter of urgency and desperation to help those in need, rather than use the country’s current crisis as a political ploy for future manipulation. Doing so would encourage the development of Cuba as an independent nation, while encouraging its people to be governed not by the will of a dictator, or by a foreign power, but by themselves.
Perhaps the most understated aspect of the situation in Cuba has been the emotional impact and fear it has left for the Cuban people there and abroad. Many Cubans living abroad, myself included, are worried because this is coming at the hardest of times for our people. After all, how can the Cuban people fight when they have no means to live?
This crisis is tearing families apart, changing the Cuba we know and love, and seeing this on a daily basis is mentally exhausting. We are left broken. We wonder whether Cuba will ever be the same, whether Cuba will ever really change, and whether us not being able to hear from our families means something dreadful has happened to them.
We know that Cuba is built upon its people, and it is nothing without its people. Cuba will not survive with its people starved, without medicine, and shot at in the street. We know, from the world’s experience with Syria that any military intervention will also be horrible; guns can kill anyone and tend to leave countless lives lost all while making no resolution. We do not wish this for Cuba or anyone.
What we do not need is more violence or more blood shed on our streets. We need a declaration of a humanitarian crisis and action taken to help Cuba to be a fully independent state; both through the aid of foreign nations to help Cuba in its plea to save its people from hopelessness, and through the will and protest of the Cuban people to choose their own leader that acts to represent their prerogatives and principles.
But we Cubans are strong. We hold the philosophies of freedom and determination within our hearts and will fight for the equality that we believe in. Not everyone can see it, but there is a certain vitality to our character, one that not even a dictator could break. It is that courage that brought Cubans to the streets because they had to be heard, and we Cubans are not known for staying silent.
“La libertad es el derecho que tienen las personas de actuar libremente, pensar y hablar sin hipocresía.” - José Martí
Translation:
“Freedom is the right held by people to behave freely, to think and to speak without hypocrisy.”
Emily Arama Sánchez is a Cuban second-year History Student at King’s College London and is LatAm’s 2021-22 Cultural and Outreach Officer with a passion for an intersectional and international approach to history and politics.
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