An unspecified number of Cubans went out on Thursday night to protest against the government of Miguel Díaz-Canel through the streets of the municipality of Los Palacios, in the western province of Pinar del Río, banging saucepans and shouting “down with the dictatorship,” as local officials sought to open a channel of communication among the crowd.
Los Palacios, with a population of about 40,000 inhabitants, is located about 123 kilometers west of the Cuban capital, Havana.
“When a people emigrates, the president is superfluous,” a protester was heard saying, at a time when the number of Cubans who arrived at the southwestern border of the United States in May was 25,691, almost 10,000 more than in the month previous. So far from October -when the fiscal year begins- to May they added 140,602, a figure that exceeds the largest exodus in the history of Cuba, which occurred after what is known as the Mariel events, in 1980, when more than 125,000 Cubans reached the shores of Florida.
“We are hungry,” another protester said.
During Thursday’s protest, demonstrators sang the Cuban National Anthem.
These demonstrations in Cuba, a few days after First anniversary of the protests that shook the country on July 11, 2021when thousands of Cubans fled from one end of the country to the other, amid popular anger generated by the pandemic, the economic crisis, and the exhaustion of a population impacted by decades of crisis.
“We can listen to all of them,” said one of several local officials, who came to the central street to appease young people, women and men who were protesting, among other problems, the repeated power outages and lack of food, two issues that are generating discomfort from one end of the island to the other.
Shouts of “we don’t want a tooth” were heard between the cacerolazos, in reference to the dialogue that the official was seeking to start, asking them to speak “in an orderly manner.”
The video of the protest, of just over 9 minutes, was published on social networks by a user identified as Ángel Luis López Plasencia. The same person did two other Facebook Lives, with different durations, showing the incident.
Later Thursday night, in a rare event, a local official who was among the protesters appeared in a video posted on his Facebook social network account, narrating what happened and delivering the official version of the events.
The official, who identified himself as José Ramón Cabreras Miranda, president of the Municipal Assembly of Los Palacios, acknowledged in the midst of darkness the recurrent power outages recently in the territory. He said there were failures due to inclement weather and the central power line.
He explained in the video of just over three minutes, speaking to the camera, that “as a result of this situation, a group of comrades from our territory takes to the streets in discontent, with pots in their hands and we, as part of our people, as leaders of our people, we went out to exchange”.
“As you can see, everything is back to normal,” the official said on the darkened street. “They left satisfied (…) at no time was there aggression,” he stressed. “There was no aggression, so that it is not distorted, so that the information is not manipulated.”
What happened a year ago?
The one a year ago was the first massive demonstration in decades on the island with a communist government and a one-party political system, where dissent is usually sentenced to long prison sentences.
To date, human rights organizations inside and outside the country have reported that more than 1,000 protesters have been arrested or imprisoned. The government informed in May that it had criminally prosecuted 380 people for crimes of sedition, sabotage, robbery with force, violence and others.
One person was killed and others reported assaults in clashes with police.
Those who echoed the protests on social networks were threatened and ordered to delete the publications that showed the discontent and the magnitude of the protests. Many were arrested, including teenagers, who have been brought to trial and sentenced to prison terms.
The government of Miguel Díaz-Canel then asked his followers to take to the streets to respond to the protesters, claiming that many were “confused” and pointed to the United States government to encourage the protests that shook the island. The island government also said that the goal was to “destabilize” the socialist system that had been in place for decades.
“The combat order is given,” Díaz-Canel said in an intervention on state television a year ago.
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