Havana Cuba. — With the brutal repression unleashed and the imposition of long prison sentences on hundreds of participants in the massive protests of the July 11, 2021 (J11) and the imprisonment of the two most prominent members of the San Isidro Movement (MSI), Luis Manuel Otero and Maikel Osorbo, the dictatorship believed it had created enough terror for no further revolts to occur.
When a few months later the playwright Yunior García Aguilera and the group Archipiélago called for a civic march for November 15, the regime was so frightened that, out of place, in violation of its own laws, it unleashed a colossal repressive effort and a paranoid and ridiculous media campaign to make believe that the march, inspired by a US Army unconventional warfare manual, sought to provoke a US intervention in Cuba.
Finally, the civic march did not take place, the regime managed to abort it. Yunior García, who had assumed a leadership that was several sizes too big for him, gave in to the threats from State Security and, as soon as the fence was removed from his home, he went to Spain.
The disappointment with Yunior García and the failure of the march in which so many expectations were encrypted caused much discouragement among opponents of the regime.
Then, the State Security campaign of harassment and intimidation against the members of Archipiélago, the protesting artists, the pro-democracy activists and the independent journalists, managed to drive several dozen of them into exile.
The bosses had a break until the protests broke out over the blackouts, which reached their climax on September 29 and 30 in numerous neighborhoods of Havana. And again, as they did on 11J, they resorted to repression. This was particularly brutal against the demonstrators who blocked Calle Línea, in Vedado. The repressors did not hesitate to hit women and minors. And the hunt is already underway against those who participated in the protests, who, accused of sedition and other charges, will be tried summarily and expeditiously by “direct attestation.”
The dictatorship, terrified, knowing that it is at its worst moment, knows no other way to face popular demands.
Demagoguery and ridiculous attempts by government spokespersons to invent bizarre and absurd stories to make believe that the protests are instigated and financed from abroad and are linked to “acts of terrorism” are useless. Only a handful of cretins, sulacranes and cynics pretend to believe these poorly woven stories. What most Cubans perceive is a suffocating agony of hunger, blackouts, prohibitions and arbitrary obligations imposed by an elite of petty fatties who only care about collecting dollars and maintaining absolute power.
By sticks and through the new penal code of Stalinist inspiration that in order to further restrict freedoms and criminalize dissent makes indiscriminate use of legislation violating legal instruments established by the regime itself, they may intimidate some, make them feel momentarily discouraged, but not gain respect or credibility. The rupture between the regime and the people is irreversible.
The protests break out again every time the dictatorship, decrepit and on the verge of prostration, suffers one of its increasingly frequent ischemias, from which it cannot recover with its clumsy moves and stubbornness in failed policies.
The ruling party tries in vain to make it clear that “the majority of those who protest, those who are not paid by the CIA, are people who are not necessarily counterrevolutionaries, confused by enemy propaganda on social networks, who do not understand the efforts that the CIA is making. direction of the country to, despite the blockade, normalize the situation of the national electro-energy system and the power of the people”.
If the bosses pricked up their ears and stubbornness opened their minds a bit, they would understand that the problem is not electricity or a few more pounds of sweet potatoes, plantains or malanga.
On the nights of October 9 and 10, protests broke out again in San José de las Lajas, Bejucal, Güines, Quivicán, Santa Cruz del Sur, Jagüey Grande, Matanzas and other towns and cities. And people no longer limit themselves to sounding the cauldrons and demanding only that they “turn on the current”: more and more cries of “freedom” are heard.
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