Havana.- A deep economic and energy crisis, daily protests over the lack of electricity and food, and the rising number of political prisoners mark this Saturday the fifth anniversary of the massive social uprising of July 11, 2021 (11J) in Cuba.
The anniversary comes as six months have also passed since the increase in pressure from Washington, with an oil blockade—which has paralyzed the island and greatly deteriorated the already precarious living conditions—and new sanctions, which are driving away foreign companies.
Just this week the island has suffered two national blackouts, bringing the total to four so far this year. However, the situation is not much better under normal conditions: Havana receives on average barely one or two hours of electricity a day and in the provinces, outages can last up to three consecutive days.
In this context, protests are recorded daily, usually by dozens of people who, peacefully, mainly in Havana, demand basic services from the State, such as electricity, water, and food.
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Social discontent is expressed through pot-banging protests, street blockades, and trash burning.
Winds of protest
Some voices of the Cuban dissidence argued that 11J marked a historical and irreversible rupture in the relationship between society and the State, and that the air breathed these days on the island is one of protest.
“The structural deepening of shortages and inequalities could produce an event similar to 11J,” maintains Cuban opposition figure Manuel Cuesta Morúa; while Cuban opposition figure Marthadela Tamayo acknowledges that since 11J, there has not been a similar demonstration, “in the sense that it was massive,” and recognizes that the island could experience another 11J, as “current conditions lead to it.”
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Cuesta Morúa also indicates that the protests currently taking place on the island consolidate, five years after 11J, a “reconfiguration of the new type of relationship between Cuban society and the State: a rupture of the historical contract between the revolutionary people and Government.”
For her part, the director of Cubalex, Laritza Diversent, pointed out in an online discussion that “since the 11J protests, the Cuban civilian population has not stopped taking to the streets” (to protest) and highlights, in turn, a “change of perspective within the citizenry,” which “has created mechanisms to demonstrate.”
However, Cuesta Morúa acknowledges, the Cuban government “is hardening its response by imprisoning and imposing harsh sentences on some of those who protest, as a message about its determination to make the citizens’ manifest discontent more costly.”
In this sense, the Cuban Observatory for Human Rights (OCDH) denounced that in Cuba there is “a serious repressive situation” and recorded “at least 1,949 repressive actions” in the first semester alone.
Political prisoners
This week marked the end of the prison term for Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, one of the most visible faces of artistic dissidence and the leader of the San Isidro Movement, who was arrested precisely on July 11, 2021, when he was attempting to join the protests.
The 38-year-old artist finished his five-year sentence for contempt and public disorder on July 9, but he has not been released.
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The NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW) criticized this Saturday that this seems like “a release conditioned on exile.”
HRW also denounced that five years after 11J, some 800 political prisoners remain incarcerated, nearly half of them for participating in those demonstrations.
As several human rights organizations have pointed out, the 11J protests ended with the arrest of more than 1,400 people.
HRW demanded that the Cuban government release all political prisoners “immediately and unconditionally” and put an end to its “systematic repression” of dissent.
Contrary to these positions, the Cuban government has insisted over these years on pointing to 11J as a “popular victory,” as the Organization Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC, the only legal one), Roberto Morales Ojeda, wrote on social media this Saturday.
“We will never deny revolutionaries that right! The Homeland must be defended,” he insisted.
