US embassy says ‘absurd’ to suggest Washington behind protests in
Santiago de Cuba led by parents struggling to feed their children
The Cuban government has summoned the US
ambassador, Benjamin Ziff, to its foreign ministry, accusing Washington
of stoking a protest which saw hundreds of people take to the streets in
the island’s second city of Santiago de Cuba.
The
demonstration late on Sunday was a rare public show of disenchantment
against Cuba’s communist government, and was apparently led by parents
struggling to feed their children in the face of a worsening food
crisis. The protesters reportedly chanted: “Without electricity and
food, the people get hot.”
Power
cuts of up to 18 hours a day have meant that as the island heads into
summer it is almost impossible to preserve what little food there is.
Sunday’s
protests reportedly began when mothers turned up at a government
building complaining they could not provide for their children,
chanting: “We are hungry.”
Similar protests
broke out in El Cobre and Bayamo, while smaller groups gathered in Santa
Marta, near the Varadero beach resort, and in the city of Matanzas.
The US embassy in Cuba tweeted: “We urge the Cuban
government to respect the human rights of the protestors and address
the legitimate needs of the Cuban people
But a US state department spokesman said it was “absurd” to suggest Washington was behind the protests.
Cuba is in the grip of an economic slump, worsened by soaring inflation
and the sense of an increasing divide between rich and poor. The
state-run bodegas where Cubans traditionally receive their rations of
staples such as rice, beans, salt, sugar, coffee and, crucially, baby
milk, are increasingly empty. Meanwhile, small shops have popped up
across the island after small and medium-sized private enterprises were
allowed to open in an effort to ease the shortages.
But with state salaries now as low as $10 a month when measured against
black market currency rates, products in these private stores are far
beyond the reach of anyone without access to money from abroad or hard
currency from jobs in tourism and business.
Beatriz Johnson, the first secretary of Santiago’s communist party,
addressed the crowd in Santiago from a rooftop, telling protesters the
government was in the process of putting together a “food basket” that
would include rice and sugar. She later told reporters her explanations
of the situation had been listened to “attentively” and “respectfully”.
Her approach marked a stark contrast to the government response during
widespread protests in July 2021, after which more than 1,000 people
were detained. At that time, Cuba’s President Miguel Díaz-Canel called
on “all revolutionaries to go to the streets to defend the revolution”,
adding the historically resonant command: “The order to fight has been
given.”
Díaz-Canel blamed Sunday’s protests on “enemies of the revolution”, “mediocre politicians” and “terrorists” in south Florida.
Beyond
the capital, Havana, where the vast majority of diplomats, foreign
media and businesspeople live and work, the situation facing Cubans is
increasingly bleak.
The currency, the Cuban
peso, was trading on Monday at 325 to the dollar, against an official
rate of 24 (another rate of 120 is used for certain items). Recently,
the price of gasoline went up fivefold, and GDP is 10% below its level
in 2019. The number of tourists coming to the island from Europe and
Canada, a major source of income, is stagnating, according to the
Aruba-based Tourism Analytics.
In February, the
minister of the economy, Alejandro Gil – the public face of economic
reforms that have seen inflation take hold – was dismissed for “grave
errors”, and was later put under government investigation.
On
X, the writer Yuliet Teresa called the US embassy’s response to the
protests “hypocritical and cynical”, but suggested the Cuban media
should report “what people feel, their anxieties and concerns”.
Cuba
state television’s main news discussion programme announced the subject
of Monday’s show would be: “The United States, the Miami mafia and the
anti-Cuban campaigns.”
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