The demonstrations follow civil unrest earlier this month and large-scale protests that broke out last summer as frustration grows with the ruling Communist Party. Residents assembled in the streets on Monday night, according to reports, to chant their demands, crying out: “Freedom! Freedom!”
The entire country was plunged into darkness for days after it was battered by Hurricane Ian on September 27, with residents blaming the government for the infrastructure’s collapse and accusing officials of responding too slowly to fix it.
Some areas are still without power two weeks on, with a press release posted on the Cuban government’s own website on Monday revealing that in the province of Pinar del Rio just “38.5% of the electricity service has been restored” while the water supply situation remains “complex.”
More than 10,000 homes in the province were “total collapses,” an account of an official meeting noted.
Some analysts noted a drop in internet use after the storm, before it was cut almost entirely two days later on September 30. Before the connection went down, some news had filtered out about protests.
Last week, internet monitor NetBlocks.org posted a chart showing the sudden outage, with director Alp Toker saying: “We can confirm the near-total internet blackout in Cuba. We believe the incident is likely to significantly impact the free flow of information amid protests.”
Now it appears that the demonstrations are not over, with reports they have flared up again this week in Spanish online newspaper CiberCuba. The site was set up by Cuban expats in 2014 to report on the island—whose own press is heavily censored, according to Amnesty International.
CiberCuba reports that citizens have taken to the streets to bang pots and pans, honk their car horns, and chant slogans. Protests have taken place in the capital Havana, as well as Bejucal, Güines, Jaruco and San José de las Lajas, the site added.
CiberCuba quoted an unnamed Cuban woman, now living outside the country but in touch with people there, as saying Cubans “no longer want more promises or empty words; they want freedom… they’ve already taken away the internet; I’ve lost contact with everyone there.” The protest in Bejucal was particularly busy, CiberCuba said, reporting that a large crowd marched through the streets crying: “Freedom! Freedom!”
Newsweek has reached out to the Cuban government for comment.
An article on the independent blog Havana Times on Sunday claims most of the country’s crops have been decimated by the hurricane, with frustration increasingly turning towards officials. One farmer was quoted as saying: “We’ve spent years trying to get paid for our products. The state doesn’t pay well and it doesn’t pay on time. We had to wait until a hurricane passed through this area and destroyed everything for senior officials to meet with the guajiros [farm workers].”
It is unclear whether Cuba’s President, Miguel Mario Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, or Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz have addressed the issue. But Humberto López, a presenter on Cuban state television, warned citizens of the consequences of “anarchy” in Cuba, adding: “There are laws here, there is a criminal code that is very clear.”
Back in July 2021, Cuba saw its biggest anti-government protests in decades. Thousands took to the streets to demand change as they demonstrated against food shortages and power failures. The Cuban government blamed U.S. sanctions for the unrest.
The U.S. sanctioned the island nation in 1962 when President John F. Kennedy introduced a trade embargo in a bid to stop the spread of Communism. The sanctions remain one of the world’s longest-running boycotts of one country by another.
On Thursday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with activists from Cuba, as well as from Nicaragua and Venezuela, calling them “human rights defenders, [who are] making sure, to the best of their ability, that people in their countries have a voice despite the governments and regimes that are trying to silence them.”
A State Department spokesperson told Newsweek: “We urge the government to respect the right of the Cuban people to protest without repression or arrest and to allow unrestricted use of the internet.
“We stand in solidarity with the Cuban people who express themselves in peaceful protest… We will continue to work with our partners around the world to demonstrate our collective support for the rights of all Cubans.”
