"What happened could be seen coming."
A boy named Ariel says it sitting in a pedicab in Old Havana, pointing to a merciless queue in front of a store that operates with the national currency and where they have just taken out detergent.
There is calm in the neighborhood, but Ariel's lament is that of many Cubans, whether they work for the State or in the private sector: pedaling or not pedaling, with a normal income, they are not enough to live.
"If you add to this that there are no medicines, that the shortage is absolute, the queues of hours, plus the blackouts that have begun and decades of successive crises, all without hope that things will improve, because there you have the bomb", believes the young man, who does not want to give his last name and claims to have seen "from afar" the demonstrations that shook the capital and several cities and towns of Cuba last Sunday, and which have caused a true national commotion.
“People don't give more.
Never before had such an outbreak happened ”, he assures.
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“Cuba has accumulated too many dissatisfactions without channeling
A tour of Old Havana and Central Havana five days after the protests shows the open wounds, and also the magma that oozes from them. On the Malecón, at each corner of its seven kilometers, there are two or three policemen stationed. Special troop agents in black uniforms - which are impressive - are exhibited at times along the Paseo del Prado, San Lázaro and other main streets that were the scene of the incidents on Sunday and Monday, where there were violent episodes, assaults on shops, one death , dozens of wounded on both sides and hundreds of detainees.
From time to time, in some parks and public spaces, groups of civilians are seen shouting slogans to reaffirm their adherence to the revolution, and it is true that there is tranquility in the street, but also that there are always the long lines to buy bread, food , basic necessities and, now, even in the doorbells that repair mobiles, where VPN applications are installed to access the Internet, since the internet does not work, or works very badly, since the protests.
Half an hour's drive from Old Havana, in the La Coronela neighborhood, Yunior García receives journalists in his small apartment in a battered building. "People have begun to open their eyes, they are losing their fear and willing to do something to make things change, especially young people, it is already a generational problem", is their perception. García, 38, is a playwright and was one of the leaders of the demonstration on November 27 in front of the Ministry of Culture, where some 300 people, mostly creators, gathered to demand freedom of expression and an end to harassment. against those who disagree. Today he is under a precautionary measure of house arrest, after being arrested on Sunday in a sit-in in front of the Cuban Institute of Radio and Television,carried out in solidarity with those who took to the streets in the town of San Antonio de los Baños, the spark that ignited the wave of demonstrations.
Yunior García, Cuban actor and playwright, looks out onto the street from the building where he lives in Havana, Cuba, on July 15.Yander Zamora
He was released on Monday.
García does not doubt that the Government can manage to contain the protest with the use of police force and the appearance, for the first time, of anti-riot teams in the streets - "something new for Cubans" -, but he considers that what happened marks " one before and one after".
"This is a general crisis, there is already a rupture in a part of society that does not trust the Government and is not afraid to express what it thinks," he adds.
He thinks that now "they have only put a band-aid on a leak that is irreversible, but they have not changed the broken piece." “They can contain the situation with the lack of information, with the internet cut-off, with police repression, but it will be for a while. If there are no real concrete, structural, objective changes, no cosmetic reforms, things in Cuba will continue to get worse, ”says García. In his opinion, it is imperative to open inclusive spaces in society and democratize the country, but not only politically. "There are many prestigious economists who have long been calling for radical transformations to improve people's lives and for the country to progress, and they ignore them."
Ricardo Torres is a researcher at the Center for the Study of the Cuban Economy, and like many of his colleagues, he has been warning for a long time that the situation is serious and that changes need to be speeded up. “I have no doubts that what was stopped, or was done badly and half in the last decade, has a lot to do with the current crisis. Many of us had a sense of urgency that was unfortunately not shared by the authorities. Political will has been lacking, and there are also gaps in key technical competencies within public officials, ”he says. Like the rest of his compatriots, Torres experienced the violent events of recent days with anguish, although, like Ariel in his pedicab, he thinks it was possible to foresee that something was going to happen. "Personally,I could see that too many dissatisfactions were building up that were not being channeled. The hardships are so acute that many are reminded of the worst moments of the early nineties. "
What happened in recent days has shocked the country like never before, and many artists and people of culture have spoken openly and critically about the police violence seen in the streets these days. “The construction of that country has to be through consensus and not through violence and repression. A Cuba in which tranquility and unity have to be preserved with the streets in the hands of special troops will be a broken Cuba, ”said film director Fernando Pérez, summarizing the feelings of many creators.
At the highest political levels, the shock has also been felt.
On Saturday, in front of the United States Embassy, on the boardwalk, a demonstration of support was called in which Raúl Castro and Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel were present, who once again accused Washington of being behind the protests and manipulating social media to provoke an uprising and chaos in the country.
Two days ago, the authorities announced that they will allow the importation of food and medicine without tariffs to travelers arriving in the country, a first measure in the direction of alleviating the situation, but clearly insufficient.
A man walks past a graffiti of Fidel Castro, on July 16, in Havana, Cuba.Yander Zamora
“It seems very possible that everything that happened in Cuba as of July 11 was encouraged by a greater or lesser number of people opposed to the system, even paid some of them, with the intention of destabilizing the country and causing a situation of chaos and insecurity. "Wrote Cuban novelist Leonardo Padura from his home in the popular Mantilla neighborhood." It is also true that later, as often happens in these events, opportunistic and regrettable acts of vandalism occurred. But I think that neither evidence takes one iota of reason from the scream that we have heard. A cry that is also the result of the desperation of a society that is going through not only a long economic crisis and a specific health crisis, but also a crisis of confidence lost of expectations ”, added the writer.
Padura was caught by the incidents watching the Euro Cup final on television. "They interrupted the game to put the statements of Díaz-Canel in the town of San Antonio de los Baños," he says, and says that since then he has practically not been able to connect to the internet. When asked how his neighborhood is now, he says quiet, "with the same line as always in front of the store on the block." What happened, he believes, is a "clear warning" to the Government and it should pick up the glove. “What is imposed are the solutions that many citizens expect or demand, some demonstrating in the street, others giving their opinion on social networks and expressing their disappointment or disagreement, many counting the few and devalued pesos that they have in their impoverished pockets and many, many more,queuing in resigned silence for several hours in the sun or rain, including a pandemic, queues at markets to buy food, queues at pharmacies to buy medicines, queues to get our daily bread and for everything imaginable and necessary". Padura, Torres, Ariel and Yunior García agree on something else, and on that they agree with the authorities: if the United States really wants to help the evolution in Cuba, it must immediately eliminate the economic embargo, which exacerbates the hardships. "With its policy, Washington becomes the main ally of the Government," says Yunior from his recollection in the La Coronela cast.queues to reach our daily bread and for everything imaginable and necessary ”. Padura, Torres, Ariel and Yunior García agree on something else, and on that they agree with the authorities: if the United States really wants to help the evolution in Cuba, it must immediately eliminate the economic embargo, which exacerbates the hardships. "With its policy, Washington becomes the main ally of the Government," says Yunior from his recollection in the La Coronela cast.queues to reach our daily bread and for everything imaginable and necessary ”. Padura, Torres, Ariel and Yunior García agree on something else, and on that they agree with the authorities: if the United States really wants to help the evolution in Cuba, it must immediately eliminate the economic embargo, which exacerbates the hardships. "With its policy, Washington becomes the main ally of the Government," says Yunior from his recollection in the La Coronela cast.Yunior affirms from his recollection in the cast La Coronela.Yunior affirms from his recollection in the cast La Coronela.
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