Cuba Is Bleeding
By Pedro Pablo Morejon
HAVANA TIMES – A poor girl dies because a wall collapses on top of her at a school in Guantanamo. Three girls die because a balcony comes falling down over their heads and crushes them in Havana. Another girl dies because of an ambulance that never came. Another autistic child dies for the same reason. Dozens of young people died when a tank exploded at the Matanzas super oil tank facility.
People are dying. The reality is lots of people are dying in Cuba.
A high intensity hurricane sweeps across the Pinar del Rio province. It leaves many homes in ruin, hundreds of families without a roof over their heads. Damage to agriculture and the vegetation. Fallen electricity posts and cables cause cuts to the already irregular electricity supply.
Not only in my province, but blackouts are also widespread. The National Grid is suffering an unprecedented collapse and the real cause is never known. Almost nothing works here.
The situation is becoming more and more delicate. People are suffering. Between dengue fever, shortages of water, food, medicine… everything, Cuba has never been closer to the brink of a humanitarian crisis. An SOS for Cuba has never been more justified.
Protests have broken out. The Cuban people are desperate and have lost their fear, and they’ll take to the streets once again. The largest protests are taking place in Havana.
There are protests in Cerro, Playa, La Liza, Guanabacoa, San Miguel del Padron, Arroyo Naranjo, Central Havana… in almost every municipality of the capital. They involve thousands of Cubans and the regime has responded with repression and temporary cuts to Internet access. Eye-witness accounts and some videos posted show the police and special riot forces hitting and arresting people.
Young men serving their compulsory military service are armed with batons so they can repress protestors.
As always, it’s the US Empire’s fault. According to the government, it is the Empire that is encouraging the protests, while they blockade us.
The reality is that the Cuban regime invests thousands of dollars in propaganda ads in The New York Times newspaper and spends millions in the logistics needed to repress any sign of dissidence, resources which could be used to solve the Cuban people’s pressing needs.
There aren’t ambulances to save lives, but there are more than enough police patrol cars to repress the population.
There isn’t electricity for the population, but there is for hotels for foreigners and high-ranking officials’ homes.
Plus, they are so afraid of a mass national protest that they need to sweep up the crisis and they have just asked the US for help to do this, which is unprecedented.
Help, which if the US agrees to throw a lifeline for this dictatorship, many believe that the Biden Administration should place conditions so that the aid really does reach the Cuban people in need.
Why don’t the leaders leave the country and leave the island to the Cuban people? With democracy and a market economy, Cuba could get out of this jam and become a prosperous country.
Leave. I’m sure you will find refuge in countries like Russia, Iran or China, and you won’t have to pay for your crimes.
They should go, but we already know they won’t do this out of the goodness of their hearts.