Consider This from NPR - How Cuba's Government Is Attempting To Silence Unprecedented Protests

Episode Date: July 15, 2021

The protests that erupted in Cuba over the weekend are the biggest the country has seen in decades. Cubans are suffering through a summer of shortages, from food and electricity to medicine. All of which have been made worse by the pandemic. Officials in the authoritarian government are tying to stamp out the unrest quickly. These demonstrations present a political opportunity for President Biden. NPR's Franco Ordonez reports on how the White House's response could change future Florida votes. NPR international correspondent Carrie Kahn looks into internet blackouts enacted by the Cuban government in an attempt to stop organizing happening on social media platforms. And Miami-Herald editorial writer Luisa Yanez explains why a younger generation of Cubans may not buckle under pressure. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Dina Stars is a 25-year-old YouTuber in Cuba, and she's got a large following. Her videos are a mix of life updates and pop culture. Sometimes she has her mom on to offer advice to her followers. Here's a video from last week. In response to the question, how do I get my ex's attention, her mother suggests just moving on. She says one nail does drive out another. Now that was published last Wednesday.

On Sunday, Dina posted this. She's protesting alongside thousands of other Cubans in the streets of Havana, and they're shouting, we want freedom. Cuba is suffering through a summer of shortages. Food, electricity, medicine, all of which have been made worse by the pandemic. On Tuesday morning, Dina made an appearance on a Spanish news channel. She was talking about the sweeping arrest of activists, protesters and journalists since this weekend. And then, mid-conversation, she paused.

State security forces were at her apartment, and they demanded that she go with them to the Havana police station. Right before she left the interview, she said, I hold the government responsible for anything that may happen to me. A visibly shaken Dina Stars reappeared with a post on Instagram on Wednesday. She said she had been arrested for promoting the protests, but has since been released, and that she was, quote, on the side of truth. Consider this. The protests that erupted in Cuba over the weekend are the biggest the country has seen in decades.

We'll look at how the government is working to shut them down and whether that strategy can last. From NPR, I'm Adi Cornish. It's Thursday, July 15th. This message comes from NPR sponsor, Sattva, the comfort company. Sattva was the first company to sell luxury mattresses online without the hassle or expense of traditional mattress stores, so Sattva customers have always paid about 50% less than retail. Visit s-double-a-t-v-a-dot-com-slash-n-p-r-today

where NPR listeners save an additional $200. Sattva, the comfort company. Investigations into police use of force and misconduct were secret in California until now. We've sifted through hours of interrogation tape to find out who does the system of police accountability really serve and who does it protect? Listen now to every episode of the new podcast on our watch from NPR and KQED. It's Consider This from NPR. A litany of things led to the conditions that many Cubans are now protesting.

Sanctions from the former Trump administration, the tourism industry hollowed out by the pandemic, remittances from relatives in the U.S. slowing down, and the demonstrations against the authoritarian government aren't just in Cuba. Miami's Cuban community out in force again, pleading patria y vida, homeland and life, meaning better living conditions and freedom

for their fellow countrymen and women in Cuba. Americans in Miami have been protesting in solidarity. Many are frustrated by the difficulty of sending aid. Some want the U.S. to use a heavier hand. What type of intervention, action, would you like to see from the White House? Military intervention. We've done it before in other countries, and we definitely are late to the party. This isn't about politics.

This is about saving lives. Here's Mr. Worldwide himself, the rapper Pitbull. He posted this video to Twitter on Wednesday. It gets me hot, it bothers me, and it frustrates me to a certain extent being a Cuban-American and having a platform to speak to the world and not being able to help my own people, not being able to get them food, not being able to get them water, but most of all, not being able to help and really get them what they deserve, which is freedom. Pitbull said Americans need to get creative because politics are going to be politics. Although this week, President Biden did voice his support for the protest. people demanding their freedom from an authoritarian regime. And I don't think we've

seen anything like this protest in a long, long time, if quite frankly ever. For President Biden, this has the potential to be a political gift from the gods. Fernand Amandi, a Democratic pollster in Florida, spoke with NPR this week. He has the opportunity through his actions as the leader of the United States in the free world to play a role in championing the efforts. Amandi says if Biden plays this right, it could help counteract Republican attacks linking Democrats to socialism and potentially help with Biden's popularity in Florida, which he lost to former President Trump. There are going to be political rewards to be reaped

if Cuba does transition to a free democracy. And whoever the president of the United States is at that time, the political rewards could be profound. But this is a delicate balancing act, according to Benjamin Gaddan. He led Latin America policy in the Obama White House. He says if Biden shows too much support, he could play into the hands of Cuban officials, making it easier for them to say

the U.S. is behind the demonstrations, which could diffuse the movement. What you're seeing in the very careful response from the Biden White House is a desire not to undermine this promising protest movement. In a television address on Wednesday night, Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel made a rare admission. He said his government's response to food and medicine shortages played a role

in the protest. Until now, the Cuban government has really only blamed the U.S., and they blame the decades-long embargo for strangling Cuba's economy. And Cuba's foreign minister, Bruno Rodriguez, accuses the U.S. of funding a multi-million dollar cyber campaign to foment social unrest. These days, the U.S. doesn't need missiles or Marines. They have bots and automated cyber accounts. Now, what you hear in that accusation? Cuban officials reckoning with a new tool that poses a threat to their power. The Internet.

Cubans have only gotten widespread access in the past few years, and now social media and messaging apps are helping protesters get organized. NPR correspondent Carrie Khan reports. Junior Garcia is a co-host of a popular Cuban podcast called El Enjambre. It drops every Saturday. Last Saturday, Garcia and friends were talking about the rise in COVID cases in Cuba, and Garcia presciently interjected this tidbit in the opening remarks. Dice que en Cuba las revoluciones siempre ocurren en el verano. They say in Cuba that the revolutions always occur in the summer, he said.

The next day, Garcia was on the streets following the protests on social media. Many Cubans, angry about everything from rising prices, food shortages, long lines, and lack of freedoms, were posting videos in real time. But by late Sunday, the government had shut off many social media sites. And Garcia's WhatsApp number went unanswered. He and dozens of others had been rounded up and detained. Alp Toker of NetBlockers, a London-based internet global monitoring firm,

says since Sunday evening, the state telecommunications company at TEXA blocked social media sites including WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram. The Cuban authorities have selectively switched up internet access to major platforms. This affects most, if not all, of the general population at the present time. Toker says the government can pick and choose which apps to remove from general use. He says last November, when a much smaller group of artists held protests demanding freedom of speech, the government simply shut off Twitter and YouTube. It's unclear how long the current outage will continue, since the government needs the internet too, says Ted Hankin of Baruch College.

To shut down and control information also is shooting itself in the foot, in the sense because it needs that for economic development to also spread its own messages. Podcaster Junior Garcia was released from jail, but worries how he'll keep working without the internet. I reached him on a phone line in Havana. He says this keeps us disconnected, uninformed, and unable to participate in peacefully solving Cuba's problems. Garcia says he'll keep speaking out, even if he has to do it over an old-fashioned phone line.

NPR international correspondent Carrie Khan. The internet crackdown means that from the outside looking in, the protests seem to have gone quiet. But that might not be the case. We're hearing from special sources that there is still a mood of revolt on the island. Luisa Yanez is an editorial writer for the Miami Herald. She's been following the protests closely, and she was born in Havana and fled with her family when she was young. Yanez says she's hearing about widespread arrests similar to Dina Starr's,

that YouTuber at the beginning of the show. It's a very delicate mood in Cuba right now. Anybody who dares to go out in the streets will be likely grabbed and taken into custody. Yanez has written about the tried and true tactics the Cuban government has used to squelch this kind of unrest and how they might not be as effective against a younger generation. We started our conversation talking about why those in power feel so threatened by these kinds of demonstrations. Well, Cuba doesn't like for the rest of the world to think that anything in Cuba is nothing but happiness and joy among the people. They are blaming it on COVID, but demonstrators are trying to make the distinction

that yes, times are hard because of COVID, but this is about the repressive government. This is about not having any freedom of expression. This is about not being able to assemble. This is about not having any freedom of expression. This is about not being able to assemble. This is about 60 years of the same government. Other than kind of squelching this dissent, what is the other response, so to speak, from the Cuban government? Are they responding to these particular issues? Well, yesterday they said that they would be allowing travelers to the island to bring goods, medicine, clothing, anything for their relatives or other people and without charging them customs duty. And this is this is sort of a unique situation where our government is kind of saying, people from the outside, we are letting you bring stuff in. We're not going to do anything. We're just going to let you bring the goods to us. And that falls on Miami Cubans who have relatives on the island

who are suffering. So they will spend hundreds, thousands of dollars to travel to Cuba with goods to deliver to them or pay somebody to take the goods down. The Miami Herald has also talked about the fact that Cuba, as you say in your headline, rolled out 90-year-old Raul Castro. What do you think was the symbolism that was attempted here? And why do you think that in this moment, that this is ineffective? This was harking back to the old days of the revolution. And the only one left is Raul. He retired earlier this year. But when the question of defending the revolution, as they say, suddenly erupted on Sunday, they called on him to be a face of this is what we did 60 years ago. We're not going to have this taken from us. Here's Raul, who is 90 years old

at this point. And Cuba is dealing with a younger, a young generation that is not buying into this idea of a revolution that happened 62 years ago. So Raul was there to remind them. And the president called out for old revolutionaries and communists to come out to the streets and stop this uprising. Given all you've told us, the new attempts at putting down dissent and the kind of new generation at play, are these strategies from Cuba, from the government, going to be enough to keep the status quo going? Meaning in this moment, do these protests feel different to you they do largely because of the way that the Cuban people have been able to sort of take to the streets which is unheard of that doesn't happen in Cuba the the faces are younger and I think the the Cubans here which are also the the demonstrators Miami, too, are also younger.

And they're trying to get the attention, international attention. They're trying to get President Biden's attention. They're trying to get him to come to Miami. They're trying to get him to do something about Cuba. And Cuba's a hard nut to crack. Luisa Yanez, she's an editorial writer for the Miami Herald. You're listening to Consider This from NPR.

I'm Adi Cornish.