A year ago, on July 11, a small protest by Cuban dissidents in a poor suburb of Havana sparked anti-government protests across the country. In dozens of cities and towns, thousands marched to protest food and medicine shortages, power outages and a surge in Covid-19 infections. Most of the protests were peaceful, but in some neighborhoods protesters fought with police, overturned cars and looted stores.
The unprecedented protests were a symptom of deep economic and political discontent. They shocked Cuban leaders, emboldened the opposition, and revived Washington’s eternal pipe dream of regime change. Twelve months later, Cubans are still struggling with a sluggish economy, which is triggering an increase in irregular migration.
When the protests broke out, President Miguel Díaz-Canel denounced them as counter-revolutionary and called loyalists to the streets to defend the revolution. Police arrested more than 1,300 people. A few days later, however, Díaz-Canel softened his tone, conceding that the protesters had legitimate grievances. The state policy that followed included both a crackdown on vocal opponents and programs to alleviate the hardships that brought people to the streets. Protesters charged with violent crimes have been sentenced to long prison terms, ranging from five to 30 years, and key dissidents have been harassed or imprisoned. Meanwhile, the government has launched a program to improve living conditions in 302 “vulnerable communities” – poor neighborhoods that were the sites of the worst violence on July 11.
Hoping to capitalize on popular discontent, last September a group of opposition artists and intellectuals calling themselves Archipiélago joined mainstream dissidents in calling for a “Civic March for Change” on November 15. The government denounced them as counterrevolutionary agents of Washington’s regime change strategy. The forward-looking protest garnered huge international attention and the Biden administration’s wholehearted support. But on November 15, no one showed up to march or bang empty pots as organizers had requested.
The failure of the march was due in part to government harassment and defamation of the organizers. But the demands for political reform, made by young middle-class professionals, did not address the most pressing problem for the majority of Cubans: the deterioration of their standard of living. The failure of the November demonstration left the organized opposition demoralized and in disarray. Many of the young artists involved have gone into exile.
The Biden administration was set to lift some of Donald Trump’s sanctions on humanitarian grounds, but the scale of the protests has revived hopes of regime change, so the sanctions have stood. “After July 11, we hit the pause button,” said Juan Gonzalez, Joe Biden’s senior national security director for the Western Hemisphere. Biden’s Cuba policy might have been on hiatus indefinitely if the White House had not been spurred into action by a surge of Cuban migrants on the US southern border and the prospect of embarrassment at the Summit of the Americas.
From October 2021 to May 2022, more than 140,000 Cubans arrived at the border, more than three times more than in the entire previous year, and more than during the Mariel boat lift in 1980 or the rafters crisis in 1994. The humanitarian case for sanctions relief was bolstered by the argument that easing economic pressure on Cuba could reduce the influx of migrants.
Meanwhile, several Latin American presidents, foremost Mexico’s Andrés Manuel López Obrador, have threatened to boycott the June summit in Los Angeles following Biden’s decision to exclude Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua. The White House tried to appease the Latin American left by easing some of the sanctions on Cuba, but López Obrador and half a dozen other heads of state stayed home anyway.
Biden’s measures were good in theory but weak in practice. Limits on remittances have been removed, but there is no provision allowing Western Union to resume remittance services. Person-to-person group travel has been restored, but the ban on using government-owned hotels makes large group visits nearly impossible. Cuba’s family reunification program has resumed, potentially allowing safe and legal immigration, but most Cubans still have to travel to a third country to apply for a visa. Without further action, Biden’s tentative steps forward will have limited effect.
Cuba faces another long, hot summer of power shortages and blackouts. Inflation stabilized, but with the informal exchange rate of the Cuban peso against the US dollar being four times the official rate, real incomes stagnated. Although the tourism industry has reopened, the number of foreign visitors in the first quarter of this year fell by 77% compared to 2019. Cuba also suffers collateral damage from the war in Ukraine as global inflation soars food and fuel prices. major imports.
The current economic crisis is the main driver of the migration wave, but Cubans are also exhausted by years of relentless hardship. The people leaving are disproportionately young adults who see a bleak future for themselves on the island. Eleven years after Raúl Castro announced his intention to build a “prosperous and lasting” socialism, the reforms are still incomplete, the economy is no longer prosperous and the standard of living has not improved. Diaz-Canel’s slogan, “We are continuity,” meant to convey stability in the post-Castro era, rings hollow, especially to younger generations eager for change.