An organization tracking civil unrest in Cuba documented 589 protests on the island against the communist regime in July, marking an over 40 percent increase from June and confirming the persistence of a pro-freedom movement that erupted with massive nationwide protests on July 11, 2021.
Cubans have experienced a dramatic decline in their quality of life in the two years since those protests, which attracted international attention, reportedly had at least 187,000 participants, and prompted the Castro regime to order communist civilians to physically assault suspected dissidents. Among mounting concerns triggering protests are increased political repression, routine power outages, a lack of competent health care, shortages of basic foods such as eggs and chicken, a dramatic escalation of violent crime and domestic violence, and a worsening water shortage threatening to become deadly as the summer heat parches the cities.
Cuban President Fidel Castro (L) confers with his brother Raul Castro (R) December 20, 1999, in Havana. (ADALBERTO ROQUE/AFP via Getty Images)
The vast majority of the problems facing Cuba are the product of the Communist Party’s corruption and incompetence. The power outages, peaking with a nationwide blackout last fall, are the product of decades of neglecting electric infrastructure and the exile of the nation’s top engineers and other scientists. Food shortages are also largely the product of the Communist Party seizing the nation’s formerly productive farms in the 1959 coup d’etat that placed Fidel Castro in power, handing the land to inexperienced communist cronies and failing to maintain it properly. The Cuban healthcare system has been a disaster for decades, as Havana invests heavily in exporting slave doctors to friendly countries but fails to keep critical medications stocked at home.
In response to these woes, Cubans have consistently taken to the streets, at great personal peril, to demand an end to the communist regime. According to the Cuban Observatory for Conflict (OCC), an NGO that documents public dissent on the island, Cubans protested 589 times in July.
The group’s monthly report, published on Tuesday, noted that Cubans protested 414 times in June, suggesting a significant increase in public demonstrations in one month. It also represented a sharp increase in protests between July 2022 and July 2023. A year ago, the OCC documented 263 protests in July; this month’s tally represents a 124 percent increase.
The OCC noted that it documented protests in all 15 of Cuba’s provinces, though the nation’s capital, Havana, was most active. The organization divided the protests into two categories of topics – “civil and political rights” and “economic and social rights” – and found that 55.51 percent of protests documented fell into the former category, which includes protests to liberate political prisoners, demand freedom of expression, and other overtly political topics. Economic protests include demands for adequate food, water, housing, and other needs.
The political protests included multiple displays demanding freedom for those imprisoned in the aftermath of the July 2021 protests. Following figurehead “president” Miguel Díaz-Canel’s call to an “order of combat” against anyone suspected of disapproving of communism, the Castro regime engaged in mass violence and arrested over 1,000 people. Many of those arrested were sentenced to decades in prison in mass trials with no access to due process. A large number of those still languishing in prison are children. According to a study by the human rights group Prisoners Defenders, 100 percent of Cuban political prisoners experience torture.
Virgen Frometa, sister of Germany-based Cuban national Luis Frometa, sentenced to 25 years in prison for his participation in recent anti-government protests, cries during an interview with AFP at La Guinera neighbourhood in Havana, on March 29, 2022.(YAMIL LAGE/AFP via Getty Images)
Several protests occurred in prison, reportedly led by those serving their sentences. At least five political prisoners engaged in hunger strikes in July.
The OCC report found several protests also in response to the Cuban government imposing stricter punishments for young men who attempt to avoid the nation’s mandatory military service. Families, it noted, “are increasingly opposed to having their sons recruited to send them to military units where frequent abuses and suicides occur, as well as the possibility that they may be sent to serve as cannon fodder for Russia in Ukraine. Reports surfaced in May suggesting the Russian government was offering Cubans “express” citizenship if they were willing to join the Ukraine invasion, alarming Cubans.
The economic issue most pressing to Cubans this month, the report documented, was water. The communist regime left several Cuban provinces, and major cities such as Havana, without access to clean water. In Manicaragua, Villa Clara, central Cuba, about 10,000 people protested a total lack of drinkable water this month. In Havana, the water shortages prompted a protest in which a mother and her two daughters sat in the middle of a highly-trafficked street holding empty pitchers, condemning the Revolution.
Similarly, a larger group of Havana residents blocked a road to demand electricity this month after ten days without it, resulting in their meager food supplies rotting.
Other protests denounced the government failing to address a growing dengue fever outbreak, rising rates of hunger, and domestic violence, which has resulted in 12 women being killed by their partners or ex-partners so far this year, in addition to brutal non-fatal attacks.
The Castro regime has done little to address the core issues prompting protests, instead choosing to condemn and attack the protesters. The brutal tactic appears to have failed. An anonymous survey published by the polling firm Cubadata in July found that 29 percent of Cubans would join an anti-government protest “without thinking twice,” while 43.5 percent said they “might” join a protest – meaning over 70 percent of Cubans would at least consider vocally defying the government’s public speech controls.