Young dissidents who rely on the Internet to spread their ideas called for a protest on Monday, an unprecedented bold move in Cuba.
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Havana-this route starts during the day and runs until night. In the darkness before dawn, hundreds of people are waiting. Four women slept on cardboard boxes, sharing a thin blanket. Chat with other people to stay awake. A nurse arrived and took her place after a 24-hour shift.
Each of them holds a ticket to enter the Cuban government supermarket, which is the only place where you can find basic items such as chicken, ground beef and toiletries. At 5:27 on Wednesday morning, a man wearing a frayed baseball cap handed out the No. 302 ticket.
"If you don't line up, you won't buy anything," said a 35-year-old chef who arrived at 6 pm the previous day, but because of fear of retaliation, she didn't want to make her name public.
Even in a country that has long been accustomed to shortages of everything from food to freedom, Cuba has experienced a very bleak year. Covid-19 restrictions have made life under the new US sanctions even more difficult.
Now, the younger generation of dissidents, many of whom are artists and intellectuals who rely on the Internet to spread their ideas, are calling for protests on Monday, an unprecedented bold move in Cuba. They hope to rekindle the marches that flooded the streets last summer, demanding food, medicine, and freedom — and leading a government that was not composed of veterans of the communist revolution of 1959 for the first time.
Just a few days before the start of the "Citizen Change March", the organizers seemed to be easing the protests due to fear of violence. Organizers encourage people to hang white sheets outside their homes, applaud at 3 in the afternoon, and find other creative ways to prove whether they feel uncomfortable going to the streets.
Although Cuba has taken one step toward opening up, taking two steps back, experts agree that Cuba is on the cusp of important events, even if the movement behind the protests is unlikely to bring down a Communist Party that has been in power for more than 60 years.
“We are witnessing an unprecedented counter-revolutionary movement in Cuba,” said Carlos Alzugaray, a former Cuban ambassador to the European Union and scholar, who considers himself a “key” supporter of the government.
This is a critical moment for the Cuban government. A generation of young people who grew up under the leadership of Fidel Castro and his brother Raúl now faces Miguel Diaz, a long-time party staunch supporter who became president in 2018 -Canel (Miguel Díaz-Canel). At the age of 61, he represents the young generation of the Cuban Communist Party, and this man has been entrusted with the task of seeing its future.
Mr. Diaz-Canel blamed Cuba’s economic ills on the long-term embargo imposed by the United States, which has intensified in recent years. The Trump administration restricted travel to the island, cut off remittances, further locked the island out of the international financial system, and dampened its foreign exchange inflows.
He has proven that he is as willing to suppress dissent as his predecessor. When the protesters took to the streets on July 11, Mr. Diaz-Canel encouraged party members to rush to chase them. Government supporters chased the demonstrators with batons.
According to statistics from the civil rights organization Cubalex, about 1,000 people have been arrested and 659 people are still in prison.
After announcing the planned demonstration on Monday, the Cuban government launched a large-scale media campaign against it, insisting that its leader is the pawn of the United States.
The playwright Yunior García (Yunior García) has become one of the leaders of the movement. He is one of the founders of Archipiélago, a Facebook group of approximately 35,000 members that aims to promote discussion and debate. The organization is the main promoter of the rally scheduled to be held in cities across the country on Monday.
"I believe that the role of art is to awaken," he said. "We must change the status quo, and let the dignified people who constitute society decide to change the status quo."
The Cuban government publicly criticized Mr. Garcia, saying that the seminars he participated in abroad, such as the seminar on how dissidents can form alliances with the Cuban army, are tantamount to planning a popular uprising. Mr. Garcia said he was working on the script.
Mr. Garcia admitted to meeting with US officials in Havana, but said he went to record podcasts and discuss the impact of the trade embargo.
He said that his Internet and phone services were often cut off, and he recently found a beheaded chicken outside his front door. This is a religious spell, which he believes is a political threat. He added that national security even visited his mother-in-law three times at work.
"They used all the tools available to intimidate us," Mr. Garcia said.
Mr. Garcia said on Thursday that he would march alone on Sunday, silently. He also urged others to take all possible peaceful measures on Monday to avoid provoking a police response.
His statement on Facebook is not clear whether the rally will still take place. Raúl Prado, a cinematographer and one of the platform coordinators, stated that the demonstrators would protest "to the extent possible."
Mr. Prado said that if there is no police car parked outside his house to prevent him from leaving on the 15th, he will march to insist on liberating political prisoners and demanding human rights.
"There is no other way to achieve change," Mr. Prado said. "If it were not for us, then the responsibility would fall on our children."
At least two Archipiélago coordinators were fired for participating in the organization, and Mr. Diaz-Canel condemned the organization as a Trojan horse for regime change backed by the United States.
"Their embassy in Cuba has been actively participating in activities that disrupt the internal order of our country," Mr. Diaz-Canel said in a recent speech.
The U.S. government spends 20 million U.S. dollars each year on projects aimed at promoting democracy in Cuba-the Cuban government considers this money to be an illegal attack on its sovereignty.
But the Archipiélago members interviewed by The Times denied that they received any funding from the US government and emphasized that Cuba’s problems can only be resolved by Cubans.
“Archipiélago is not a movement, a political party or an opposition group,” said Mr. Prado. "It has no specific political line."
The young and trendy Cuban group behind the Facebook group is in stark contrast to the typical dissidents on the island, who tend to be older, unknown to most Cubans, and severely divided into factions.
The emergence of the Internet has changed the rules of the game. After the diplomatic agreement with the Obama administration was interrupted three years ago, Cuban telephones began to use the Internet. With the popularization of the Internet, ordinary citizens learn about anti-government activities and quickly publish their complaints.
Hal Klepak, Professor Emeritus of History and Strategy at the Royal Military Academy of Canada, said that the scale of opposition the government faced this year is unparalleled in history since the Cuban Revolution.
He said: "No one imagined that there would be thousands of people on the street." "It is visible, according to Cuban standards, it is very loud. This is something we have never seen before."
But the question remains whether ordinary Cubans will participate in Monday’s protests, because the government declared the protests illegal and its organizers have lowered their demands.
The protests are scheduled for the day when the quarantine rules are lifted, tourists are welcome back, and the children are ready to return to school. The wave of Covid-19 deaths that fueled the July protests has basically subsided, and now 70% of the country's people are fully vaccinated.
Abraham Alfonso Moreno is a physical education teacher. He held a ticket number 215 outside a government store at 5 am. He said he did not protest in July and will not be on Monday. "In the end, it won't solve any problems," he said.
He is more focused on finding anti-allergic drugs.
Marta María Ramírez, a feminist and pro-democratic and gay rights activist in Havana, said that people eager to protest in July cared more about food than democracy, but this could change.
"The first cry was not for freedom. The first cry was more urgent: food, medicine, electricity," she said. "Later free."