“People here in Santiago [de Cuba] took to the streets due to social unrest, because there is no food, because of the blackouts of up to 16 hours.
Every sixteen hours they only give you three hours of light.
And people no longer give up with hunger, misery, blackouts and no water,” Evelyn Suñe, a Cuban opposition member who lives in that province in the east of the island, tells Noticias Telemundo.
Hundreds of people took to the streets of the eastern province and others throughout the communist country this Sunday to demonstrate peacefully, after several days of cuts in the electrical service - up to 20 hours in some locations - and months of shortages. of food, medicine, fuel and other basic supplies.
The protests, which are a rarity in a Cuba where power usually quickly suffocates any public demand, are the most numerous since on July 11, 2021, thousands of Cubans from all over the island took to the streets shouting “We want freedom.” !”
Hundreds of protesters were arrested, and many of them convicted in summary trials for common crimes.
“The problem is that
hunger is bigger than fear
,” said Suñe, who assured that the Santiago authorities deployed agents on the streets and militarized the neighborhoods where the protests broke out.
“I say that the people have already woken up and this is not going to stop.
This happened yesterday and it will continue.”
Many protesters, especially women with children, chanted in Santiago de Cuba the phrase “Current and food!”, according to videos recorded by protesters and published on social networks before the internet service was suspended for hours, according to complaints from the island.
The initial protest broke out in a popular neighborhood in the center of Santiago de Cuba, about 800 kilometers from Havana, Cuba's capital.
Hours later there were reports of other demonstrations in El Cobre, in the same province;
in Bayamo, in the eastern province of Granma;
and in Santa Marta, Matanzas, where the touristy Varadero beach is located.
On Sunday night, the Cuban ruler, Miguel Díaz-Canel, accused the “enemies of the revolution” of inciting the protests on the social network
“Several people have expressed their dissatisfaction with the situation of electrical service and food distribution.
This context is attempted to be taken advantage of by the enemies of the Revolution, for destabilizing purposes,” the president wrote in his account.
And he said that “terrorist” groups based in the United States “incentivize actions against the internal order of the country.”
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For their part, US congressmen and exiles in Miami expressed solidarity with the protesters who took to the streets.
“The Cuban people want freedom and the end of the murderous communist regime that oppresses them,” Carlos Giménez, Republican congressman from Florida, said in his X account.
Giménez, who was born in Cuba, called on the Biden Administration to provide Cuba with satellite internet “to stop the repression of the dictatorial regime.”
[Cubans return to the streets in protest against blackouts and shortages: they ask for “current and food”]
This Monday, the Cuban dissident Ladies in White denounced the temporary arrest of several of their members yesterday in the western provinces of Havana and Matanzas, which coincided with the day of protests in the east of the island.
The leader of the dissident movement, Berta Soler, and her husband - the former political prisoner Ángel Moya - denounced on social networks, and after being released, that they were detained outside the headquarters of the Ladies in White, in the Havana neighborhood of Lawton. .
Soler also denounced the arrests of seven women who are part of the movement, in the towns of Colón and Perico, in the province of Matanzas, and two from Havana, when they were preparing to attend mass.
More than a hundred Cubans in Miami and leaders in Cuban exile gathered on Sunday outside the popular Versailles restaurant, in the Little Havana neighborhood, to send a message of support to their compatriots.
“I support the calls of the Cuban people to 'Homeland and Life' while the island endures 65 years of misery, tyranny and oppression,” said María Elvira Salazar, also a Republican congresswoman from Florida, citing the slogan of the 2021 protests.
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The United States Government expressed its support for the protesters this Monday.
“The Cuban Government will not be able to satisfy the needs of its people until it adopts democracy and the rule of law and respects the rights of citizens,” said Brian Nichols, the head of the State Department for Latin America, on the social network X.
“We don't want more promises, but solutions”
The economic crisis and reports of state repression have pushed hundreds of thousands of Cubans to leave the island in recent years, most of them bound for the United States, in the most massive exodus since the Castro brothers took power in 1959.
Between 2022 and mid-2023, more than 300,000 Cubans left the country, according to official data.
In fiscal year 2022, U.S. authorities detained Cubans about 225,000 times at the U.S.-Mexico border.
In addition, they were intercepted at sea on more than 6,000 occasions.
One of the sectors most affected by the national crisis has been health: some 12,000 doctors will leave the public health system in 2022, according to data from the National Office of Statistics and Information.
“In Cuba you die in a hospital because there are no medicines and there is also a lack of doctors.
(...) Then imagine what that means for patients with chronic diseases, as is my case,” Héctor González, a Cuban journalist forced to emigrate to the United States in 2023 to treat his chronic kidney failure, recently told Noticias Telemundo. .
The energy crisis, exacerbated by lower imports of crude oil from Venezuela, a historic ally of Cuba, is also hitting the daily lives of millions of Cubans.
Last week, the island where about 11 million live experienced long blackouts.
On Sunday, the electricity supply was interrupted in almost 40% of the national territory, according to the state company Unión Eléctrica (UNE).
The authorities blamed the “unavailability” of fuel, in addition to breakdowns and maintenance of the country's main thermoelectric plants.
“They turn off the light at seven or eight at night and only turn it on the next day.
We suffocate, and
the little food we get is damaged
,” said María, a 27-year-old Cuban who lives in Bayamo, in a telephone interview with Noticias Telemundo.
Cuban authorities also anticipated that breakdowns and lack of fuel would cause widespread blackouts this Monday.
At the moment of maximum demand, they could simultaneously affect 31% of the island, that is, one in every three light bulbs, according to the EFE news agency.
“In Bayamo we don't want more promises, but solutions.
We are tired of the lies and we are starving.
You can't live like that, that's why people are taking to the streets,” said María, who asked not to use her last name for fear of reprisals.
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In recent days, power outages exceeding 12 hours a day have been reported in locations in different provinces of the island.
Havana has also begun to suffer rotating cuts.
“I live in Plaza de la Revolución and they have also begun to remove the light.
It's not like other places because it's not that many hours, but it's already started.
We have not seen protests here yet, but
there is a lot of discontent and something could happen
,” explains a housewife who lives in Havana and who also requested anonymity.
The Minister of Energy and Mines, Vicente de la O Levy, recently assured that the blackout situation will remain “tense” and “critical,” citing Cuba's financial difficulties.
“We are buying fuel with the limited finances we have,” he said.
However, some Cubans like the housewife in Havana believe that the island's economic situation does not have much prospect of improving, and that Sunday's protests will not be the last.
“When the protests started [in Santiago de Cuba] they took away our internet connection, but we still found out.
People are shocked and angry about hunger and everyone is paying attention to what is happening in Santiago and other provinces.
“They are not going to fix this with repression,” he said.