Summer is Approaching Cubans Discontent is Growing
As the temperature rises, many Cuban families feel they have nothing left to lose because they have hit rock bottom.
HAVANA TIMES – Summer has always been the most feared season of the year for Cuban authorities. In addition to the high temperatures that on the island begin in spring, there are the unpopular power outages and school holidays that strain domestic life. This year, the situation is especially complicated due to the fragility of the national energy system and the fuel shortage, which has extended blackouts to more than 15 hours a day in many parts of the country. July and August are approaching, and people’s anger is growing.
In recent days, street protests have been reported in Bayamo, Granma, and Santiago de Cuba. In images shared on social media, dozens of people can be heard shouting a direct demand: “We want electricity, we want food.” Engulfed in darkness, some banging pots and pans and others using only their throats, the protesters are merely the vanguard of a popular uprising that some feel is just around the corner. That perception that people are going to take to the streets appears every summer, but this one is different. Many families feel they no longer have anything to lose because they have hit rock bottom.
“They’re not asking for freedom,” criticized many internet users, mostly Cubans living abroad, upon seeing footage of the protests. While the demands for an end to the blackout and for some food to reach the rationed market seem very basic from the outside, inside the country they take on a profound political character. In a nation where all thermoelectric plants, oil imports, and the electricity service that reaches every home are in the hands of a state that monopolizes the energy sector, demanding the restoration of power seems extremely daring.
This same state structure manages the supply of food to the ration stores, handles the international market purchases of products sold in the basic family basket, and is at the forefront of most economic decisions that result in more or less foreign currency to purchase everything from rice to eggs. Any vocal public demand for improving services and the amount of food that reaches homes is taken by the regime as a challenge. A government that doesn’t tolerate the slightest criticism sees such requests as a gesture of rebellion that it cannot allow.
As temperatures rise and the darkness of power outages spreads across Cuba, the police force is preparing to confront the summer protests. The memory of the social explosion of 11 July 2021, is still very fresh in the minds of the regime, and state institutions have already warned their employees that they must take to the streets to “defend the Revolution.” This is the same repressive strategy deployed around this time every year, and it is marked this time by greater nervousness among the political police in the face of a possible popular uprising.
On one side are the military, the police, and a well-oiled propaganda machine that portrays the dissidents as enemies; on the other are the desperate and hungry people, whipped up by that “General Summer” riding on the back of heat and despair.
Translated by Translating Cuba.
Hi Moses,
I had never thought about comparing the Cuban people’s fear of revolting with the black American experience reaching a breaking point 100 years after their emancipation during the Civil Rights movements of the 1960s. I completely agree with your insightfulness and gives me hope that some day, perhaps soon, changes in my native homeland will change for the better as it did here in America.
Reading this sickens me. As a Canadian that loves to visit Cuba, I feel I must support the people that make Cuba what it is. I was always so in awe of people who have so little, yet are kind and generous, looking positively at each day. I think now that this has been taken from them.
Banding together, do you think we could impact the decisions of their government? With tourism being so important, could we not impact that by boycotting travel to Cuba? Would the government feel the loss of revenue?
I was privileged to vacation in Cuba for 2 weeks in April. Knowing about the situation on the streets of Cuba, I said to myself “ hopefully, some of what I paid for my trip will trickle down to the people”. I think that’s something I needed to tell myself to justify my trip.
I know that I won’t be visiting a country that treats their people like slaves and avoids providing basic and simple necessities. If we all did this, could this contribute to change?
Normally I try to support my commentary with a bit of evidence to help make my point. This time I have no such evidence. However, based on nearly 20 years of personal experiences in Cuba with my Cuban family members and Cuban friends, I simply don’t believe that the Cuban people have what it takes to successfully revolt this summer. Cuba today represents 3 generations of complacency grounded in fear. It took my black folks about one hundred years from Emancipation Proclamation (maybe this is my evidence?) to reach a breaking point to begin the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. Additionally, led by a handful of very brave martyrs, American Blacks had reached the point of “being sick and tired of being sick and tired”. To our benefit was an American legal system that, albeit imperfect and sporadically applied, guaranteed certain rights to peaceful protest and to reddress grievances. Cubans lack, as far as I can tell, a unified opposition and the political and legal infrastructure to fight back against the tyranny of the Castros. I just don’t see it happening this summer. Finally, American “negroes” of the 1960s marched with full bellies. If Cubans take to the streets this summer, they’ll be doing so during daylight hours only and on empty stomachs. I guess we will see…