Cuba: Protests Erupt Over Power Blackouts, Food Shortages

Facts

• A group of protestors took to the streets in the eastern Cuban city of Santiago on Sunday against lengthy power outages and food shortages across the country, reportedly facing its most severe economic crisis ever.¹
• Videos posted online showed hundreds of Cubans chanting 'electricity and food' and 'we are hungry' in the island's second-largest city amid the presence of military forces.²
• People marched to protest constant hours-long blackouts and a lack of essential food items in Santiago, while protesters in the historic city of Bayamo reportedly marched for freedom.³
• According to residents and a network monitoring firm, the government cut off the mobile internet service in parts of the Caribbean island for about five hours during the unrest.⁴
• Cuba — which witnessed the largest anti-government protests since its 1959 revolution in July 2021 — has implemented several measures, including increasing fuel prices by more than four times, to stabilize the economy.⁵
• Last month, Havana requested help from the World Food Program to deliver milk to children. The reduced flow of tourism dollars to the communist country since the COVID pandemic, as well as the US trade embargoes and sanctions, has reportedly affected Cuba's economy.⁶

Sources: ¹Associated Press, ²Miami Herald, ³Havana Times, ⁴Wall Street Journal, ⁵Time and ⁶Al Jazeera.

Narratives

• Pro-establishment narrative, as provided by Voz Media. The communist regime of Cuba has yet again resorted to shutting down internet access and communications to hide protests as if this could hold back a populist social demonstration on the island. Cubans may have long been familiar with hunger and poverty under an undemocratic regime that deceived them with promises of a better future. However, they are fed up, and this crisis will likely be the last straw.
• Establishment-critical narrative, as provided by Granma. As if strangling the Cuban economy for decades with a genocidal blockade wasn't enough, Washington now outrageously seeks to exploit the shortages that its policies created on the island to promote social disorder as well as an artificial counterrevolutionary campaign. Meanwhile, Havana works tirelessly to improve the situation and attend to the demands of its people despite current limitations.

Predictions