Havana Summer
Anti-Cuban government activists gather on Miami rooftops on July 11, 2021 to protest the handling of the coronavirus pandemic and worsening economic conditions in the island nation. Photo by Fernando Medina, via Shutterstock
Cuba is going through one of its hardest times since the Soviet Union fell. And despite a government crackdown, people are tapping social media and encrypted apps to voice anger over shortages of basic goods and a mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic.
For several days this summer, Mario Felix Lleonart Barboso reached out from his home in Baltimore to a friend in Camagüey, Cuba on Signal, the encrypted messaging app the pair used to stay in regular contact.
Lleonart Barboso, an activist in exile, fired off more than a dozen messages to his pal, asking how he was doing after July 11, when thousands of Cubans took part in one of the largest protests on the island nation in recent memory.
There was silence on Signal, so Lleonart Barboso tried his friend via Whatsapp, another encrypted messaging app. This time, a message alert buzzed on his cell phone. “He told me he had been detained,” Lleonart Barboso said. “He deleted Signal from his phone during the protests because he knew they would look at his messages if they took him. Those in power are nervous because they know the people can’t be controlled anymore. They’re worried about the next stampede demanding freedom.”
This summer, messaging apps and social media such as Facebook, Youtube, Instagram and TikTok became the media. Cuban influencers and independent journalists are using the apps to wage a digital uprising — a movement fueled by the global pandemic that has devastated the country’s once-vaunted healthcare system.
Lleonart Barboso and other Cuban exiles have stayed close to the movement, through almost daily — encrypted — conversations with family and friends back home. And with Fidel and Raúl Castro no longer the faces of the Cuban revolution, a charisma vacuum is creating fissures in the socialist structure that many of its citizens still hold to.
Barboso, a Baptist minister who, with his wife, sought religious refuge in the United States in 2016, said dissidents in Cuba have been posting their protests on Facebook and Youtube. “Some have been small and localized,” he added. “For instance, there’s a young man who’s been in jail since December because he unfurled a sign denouncing the conditions of the local hospitals. His video was widely shared by people in Cuba. These little protests were a sign that something major was going to explode.”
With the pandemic and a renewal of the United States’ economic sanctions under former president Donald Trump, Cuba is living through its worst crisis since the fall of the Soviet Union. There’s a record surge of coronavirus infections and basic medical services are severely strained. According to the World Health Organization’s Covid-19 tracker, Cuba recorded 1,489 daily cases on June 23. On July 23, the confirmed daily case count hit 7,745. Thirty days later, the number of daily cases climbed to 9,548. People are angry over shortages of basic goods, crackdowns on civil liberties and the mishandling of the pandemic.
Rare anti-government protests in Havana block traffic on the city’s Malecón on July 11, 2021. Photo by Domitille P. via Shutterstock
Irma Gomez, a Cuban American from Naples, Florida, who left her country in the 1980 Mariel Boatlift, is in regular contact with aunts, uncles and cousins in Havana and regional cities Camagüey and Matanzas. She remembers growing up as a child being taught that socialism and communism were the only ideologies that guaranteed people true freedom. [In 1980, the Cuban government allowed any Cubans who wanted to leave the country to do so. More than 100,000 people came to the U.S. in boats].
Gomez video chats on Whatsapp and Facebook with a cousin in Havana, an ambulance driver. He believed Cuba had the best doctors and best healthcare in the world, she said. “Yet, he’s seeing for himself that people can’t get the medicine they are prescribed. … They don’t even have needles. They don’t have antibiotics. (My cousin) can’t take it anymore.”
Three years ago, Cubans who could afford to pay for cell phone service no longer had to schlep to a local wifi-spot to access the Internet. In December 2018, the government-owned telecommunications company ETECSA started offering mobile data packages for sale, but at hefty prices starting at $7 for 600 megabytes to $30 for 4 gigabytes, according to NPR.
Disillusionment with the Cuban Revolution is further fueled by the departure of Raúl Castro as the country’s communist party leader in April, symbolically ending his family’s grip on power since he and his brother Fidel Castro, who died in 2016, overthrew the regime of Fulgencio Batista in 1959.
Reynaldo Fontaine, a Miami-based musician who left Cuba 20 years ago, left behind his father and brothers in Havana, who tell him that Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel doesn’t command the same respect and fear as the Castro brothers. “Love him or hate him, Fidel was the one and only significant figure for so many years,” Fontaine said. “He was a populist who knew how to move the masses. There is no one like that anymore.”
As a result, average citizens whose faith in the Cuban Revolution was unshaken under Castro rule are now thinking for themselves more, Fontaine said. “Internet access is opening their eyes. They can see Fidel’s sons going to the best nightclubs in Havana in exotic cars. But their kids are struggling to eat. The average Cuban’s worldview is different than it was 62 years ago.”
Díaz-Canel’s unpopularity was on full display on July 11. Around midday, demonstrations broke out in San Antonio de los Baños, near Havana. On social media, video clips showed hundreds of Cubans chanting anti-government slogans and demanding the president’s resignation. Soon more images and footage of protests in other cities were broadcast around the world. In American cities like Miami, Tampa and New York City, hundreds of Cuban exiles shut down highways in solidarity.
In national addresses, Díaz-Canel said protestors had been manipulated by U.S.-coordinated social media campaigns and local mercenaries. He warned the populace that the government would not tolerate further “provocations.” Since July 11,853 people have been jailed, according to human rights group Cubalex. Only 249 individuals have been released and dozens were sentenced to up to a year in prison and correctional work, according to an NBC News report.
In addition to his friend from Camagüey, Lleonart Barboso continues to look for two other people he knows. They were also detained by Cuban state police.
“I still don’t know what’s happened to them,” he said. “They've disappeared.”
After the July 11th anti-government protests in Cuba and in major U.S. cities, authorities rallied hundreds of pro-government protestors a few days later in Havana. Photo by Domitille P. via Shutterstock
After a blackout in response to the July 11 protests, the Cuban government turned on Internet access again two days later. But it is much slower, Lleonart Barbaso added. “I am still in communication with some activists, but not as much as before. … Instead of 4G, (the connection is) now barely 2G. Service interruptions are also more frequent.”
Despite anti-socialist feelings spreading across the island, the communist government’s grip on power remains firm. An imminent regime collapse remains highly unlikely as the government showed it can rally supporters, organizing marches by hundreds of people in Havana in the days after the global outcry by anti-government activists.
Still, Barboso said he’s been able to learn that the July 11 protests unified more average Cubans, who continue to press for change. “When they have the opportunity, the people will go back and take to the streets,” he said. “The fractures and divisions within the system are strong enough that they could lead the regime to lose control completely.”
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Francisco Alvarado is based in Miami and writes for national news outlets and wire services, including The Guardian, The Daily Beast and Reuters.