The Daily - Cubans Take to the Streets

Episode Date: July 15, 2021

This episode contains strong language.It was a surprise to many recently when protesters took to the streets in a small town near Havana to express their grievances with Cuba’s authoritarian government. Cubans do not protest in huge numbers.Even more remarkable: The protests spread across the island.Why are Cubans protesting, and what happens next?Guest: Ernesto Londoño, the Brazil bureau chief for The New York Times, covering the southern cone of South America. Sign up here to get The Daily in your inbox each morning. And for an exclusive look at how the biggest stories on our show come together, subscribe to our newsletter. Background reading: Thousands of Cubans have taken to the streets in cities around their country to protest food and medicine shortages, in a remarkable eruption of discontent not seen in nearly 30 years.Security forces arrested dozens of protesters after a wave of demonstrations on Sunday. But dissidents expressed hope the protests would lead to lasting change.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. 

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today. What sparked this week's massive protests in Cuba, the country's largest in 30 years? Astead Herndon spoke with our colleague Ernesto Londano about the protesters' demands, the government's response, and what may happen next. It's Thursday, July 15th.

Ernesto, what were you thinking when you first heard that there were mass protests that were breaking out across Cuba? You know, the thing to know about Cuba is people don't protest in large numbers. So when I started getting text messages and clicking on videos on Sunday, my jaw dropped. What happened was protesters took to the streets in this little town that is not very well known, San Antonio de los Baños, which is near Havana, and started broadcasting live protests. And the more people that were taken to the streets, the more their neighbors wanted to sort of follow them.

People started screaming, freedom, libertad. A clear reference to the authoritarian system that Cubans have been living in for decades. People started protesting the government and invoking the president's name, which is something that Cubans don't do frequently and certainly never in this kind of numbers. But then something remarkable happened.

You know, for a year or so, internet connectivity has become more widespread in Cuba. More and more Cubans are now glued to their phones, like so many of us are. And people across the country started clicking on those videos and became inspired to do the same thing. And all of a sudden, we had this litany of grievances just pouring out into the streets. People were out in the streets in very large numbers, chanting,

which means, And this was a play on words on the Communist Party's motto over the years, which is, which, you know, essentially means, we will defend our homeland with our lives. So what protesters were saying is we want a different kind of a country. We want a different kind of a homeland. And we are no longer wedded to these old revolutionary slogans that people associate with a very repressive system that has failed to transform the country into the utopian socialist nation that its founders imagined.

Years of this country's repression and failings to deliver on just the basic needs of its people, all of a sudden finding a chorus, an echo. And it was clear that this was something the government was ill-equipped to put out like it has in the past when small groups of people take to the streets to protest. So you started to hint at this, but what exactly are people protesting? What was the spark for the scenes that we saw?

In a nutshell, the Cuban economy has just been in a downward spiral over the past couple of years. The government is in a cash crunch, which means it's not able to buy enough food for its people or produce enough food domestically for its people. So what this looks like on the street is, you know, it's a daily hustle for ordinary Cubans to find food to put on the table. People say they wait in lines for hours to get into a store. And even when they get into the store, they often find that the price of basic staples like beans and rice, you know, is double what they paid for just a few weeks ago. We've heard from families who say that they now have to do with just one meal a day because it's physically impossible to find more food. So parents, you know, we're finding it very hard to feed their

kids. We've seen pretty horrific pictures of the conditions of hospitals. And we've heard accounts that people are just not even able to buy aspirin or find penicillin when they get sick. And this is happening at a time when COVID is exploding on the island. So, you know, across the board, people are hungry. They are afraid of the virus and the toll it's taking on their communities and their families. And to make matters worse, oftentimes the power goes out. The island is experiencing very long and disruptive power outages that just leave people sort of stewing in their sweat in the middle of summer. It feels like the basic functions of government that are being defaulted here,

food, medical care, electricity, we're talking about day-to-day activities would be totally disrupted. I can see why anger would be pointed at the government. Absolutely. And in the Cuban system, the government, which has a centrally planned economy and controls people's lives very, know, very, very tightly.

The tradeoff for living in such a system was that the state was going to provide for your basic needs, that health care would be free, that you would always have enough to eat. And on these basic promises, the government is clearly failing its people right now in ways we haven't seen for decades. failing its people right now in ways we haven't seen for decades. The conditions you are describing are also surprising because it felt like just recently that Cuba was experiencing this kind of new moment. The country seemed to be opening up. Americans were traveling there. I went there with my family three, four years ago after being legally barred from doing that. Was that a mirage? Was that moment of optimism for the country a true thing? I think that's one of the reasons this moment right now, this crisis the country's facing, feels like such cruel whiplash for Cubans. You know, I think if

you rewind the tape to what happened at the end of the Obama administration, it made many Cubans feel like prosperity was within reach, like we were on the cusp of a fundamentally different era for people on the island. Good afternoon. Today, the United States of America is changing its relationship with the people of Cuba. In the most significant changes in our policy in more than 50 years. Obama normalized relations with Cuba and essentially argued that the United States should no longer be in the business of regime change

on the island, which had been the U.S. policy for many years. Today, America chooses to cut loose the shackles of the past so as to reach for a better future for the Cuban people, for the American people, and for the world. The Obama approach was to build as many bridges between Cuba and the outside world and sort of create an incentive for the government to reform gradually and for people to gradually gain more rights, more access to capital, just the ability to be in control of their lives. You know, I'm thinking of what Havana felt sort of in the heyday of that era.

Well, Cuba is quickly becoming the place to be, the vacation hotspot. We're in the back of a taxi on the way to the airport because today we are flying to Cuba! You had cruise ships all of a sudden rolling in from the States and just, you know, thousands of tourists pouring in. And you may be able to fly from Philadelphia nonstop to Cuba real soon. Airlines from the United States were allowed to fly and there were just dozens of flights every week. States were allowed to fly and there were just dozens of flights every week. Hola, bienvenidos a Cuba. Yo soy Coronel Brian y lo siento, pero that's all the Spanish I can really remember. Pop star Rihanna visited Cuba. Rihanna went to a restaurant. Oh boy, America has really arrived in Cuba. It is the Kardashians.

The Rolling Stones will be performing in Cuba. They'll be the biggest act to play in Cuba since the Kardashians. The Rolling Stones will be performing in Cuba. They'll be the biggest act to play in Cuba since the 1959 revolution. You know, the streets of Havana became like an Instagram favorite spot for celebrities. There were incredibly trendy restaurants that were sort of all the rage. It truly felt like the country was undergoing a radical transformation. So what happened? How did things turn from that era of hope to what you seem to be describing now as real desperation on the island? Well, I think there were three main contributing factors to this crisis. And the first one was the election of Donald Trump, who campaigned promising to reverse the Obama-era policy engagement with Cuba, you know, which was meant to attract and appease

voters in South Florida. And he made good on that promise soon after taking office. He rolls out a number of measures that, you know, effectively make it harder for Americans to invest in the island, to do business in Cuba, to consider financial relationships with Cubans on the island, and to even spend money traveling there as tourists. So, you know, that means that money that, you know, the Cuban government had become used to starts drying up pretty suddenly. And all of a sudden they can't afford things they had been able to afford in the past. And their ability to invest in their infrastructure, their ability to buy food for their people, their ability to invest in their health care system, all of a sudden looks a lot more challenging than it had just a year before.

So if the Trump administration's goal was to inflict pain, it caused pain. So that's reason one of three. What was the second reason that the Cuban economy plummeted so quickly? Well, the Cubans had come to rely a lot on Venezuela, which is an oil-rich nation in which had been given Cuba subsidized oil for years. You know, in the past, this relationship had essentially entailed Cuba receiving subsidized oil in exchange for medical professionals it sent to Venezuela. But what happens in 2015 and 2016 is Venezuela enters into an economic downward spiral and its ability to continue meeting Cuba's energy needs degrades over time because the Venezuelans themselves were having a really hard time keeping the lights on. So Cuba, already frozen out by the United States,

had come to rely on Venezuela as a kind of financial lifeline. And that is pulled out from under them also. That's right. And that leaves them with very few places to turn to. What's the final reason for the economic collapse? COVID. You know, the Cubans, which, you know, pride themselves on their medical system, did a fairly good job at containing the spread of the virus early on. But in recent weeks, the virus has been exploding in Cuba. We've seen record numbers of daily infections and deaths. So this is now an epidemic that is out of control in the country and that is sort of adding just a new layer of misery to people who were already at wit's end.

What, if anything, has the Cuban government done to mitigate this crisis? I think the government's playbook has been always to urge their people to blame the United States for their problems. And in recent months, as things became worse and worse for Cubans, the government, you know, predictably pointed to the United States, pointed to the tightening of sanctions in the Trump era as the reason Cubans were suffering. Is there any truth to that argument? I mean, we did just talk about the United States applying what amounts to a policy of paying to the Cuban

government. You know, if the embargo were lifted overnight, I think there's no question that life would be easier for Cubans and it would be easier for Cubans to start putting food on the table. Many people, I think, make the argument that the embargo is at the heart of what ails Cuban people and what puts them in this sort of perpetual state of misery and scarcity. But I think other people feel the government could have, you know, taken any number of opportunities to modernize its economy, to loosen its grip on people's lives, to allow the private sector to truly take hold on the island, and that it's been too afraid to do so. It's been too afraid of what it would mean to empower citizens to be self-sufficient and to be less dependent on the state.

So the only thing that the government did in response was point to the United States as the enemy, point to the embargo. But it has not actually eased the suffering that is happening on the island in any fundamental way. It has not been able to respond to the calls of improvement on those kind of basic functionings of government. And that's been fueling the mass protests? Absolutely. I don't think the government has anything in its toolbox to alleviate the pain in the short run. You know, that it really begs the question of whether the government is going to be able to contain this frustration and either persuade or scare enough means to make the price of dissent so high that people will just go back home and wait this out. We'll be right back.

Ernesto, knowing what you know about Cuba's government, and having covered the country for years, when these protests erupted, what did you expect the government to do? I expected the government to act ruthlessly. You know, the government has perfected the art of stifling dissent and really making the price of being in the opposition insurmountable. So the president went on national television, and he called on government supporters to take back the streets. He said, this movement will succeed over our dead bodies. That was remarkable.

It also coincided with the government launching a crackdown and arresting lots of people who protested. What we've seen in the last couple of days is some of the key activists who usually lead these movements are behind bars, so they're not really able to mobilize. And also, Internet connectivity was shut down and then throttled in the last few days. So that's also made it very hard for Cubans to organize. You know, what was also interesting is the government then launched into kind of a conversation, a national dialogue of sorts with its people and said it understood that they were suffering, that it understood how unpleasant it was to live in this era of constant power shortages,

of food scarcity. And it effectively said, please bear with us. We are doing the best we can under very difficult circumstances. How did that play out? How was it received by the Cuban people? So I think a lot of Cubans are kind of in a wait and see approach. They're going to spend the next few days kind of getting a sense of whether the terrain looks permissible to call for new demonstrations or whether the government is going to manage to stifle this by just inflicting enough pain on enough of the leaders of this movement to discourage people from a repeat of what we saw on Sunday.

The classic government dilemma of carrot versus stick. You're saying the evidence points to usually the Cuban government relies on that stick. Oh, absolutely. And I think we're in an era where the government doesn't have much in the way of carrots to offer to people. And it still has a pretty effective and ruthless police state which can wield the stick.

You know, as I have been thinking of what the weeks and months ahead are likely to look like, you know, it's hard not to think about what I think is the closest precedent to what we're seeing, which is the uprising back in the mid-90s, in 1994, that became known as El Maliconazo. Can you tell me about that one? Sure. You know, the Soviet Union for many years treated Cuba as sort of its special ally and kept Cuba financially afloat. and kept Cuba financially afloat. So when the Soviet Union goes under, things change dramatically for the Cubans and the Cubans find themselves with no back of plan and nowhere to turn to for help.

People were going hungry, you know, something reminiscent to what we're seeing now. And people took to the streets. How did the government respond in 1994 to those protests? It responded with repression. But, you know, something happened that was really unique and very interesting. The government at the time said, if so many of you are fed up and if so many of you don't want to believe in the Cuban socialist project, you can leave and join your traitor relatives in Miami. So it effectively

enabled a mass exodus of people that took to the seas in rafts and small boats. And at the end of the day, added up to tens of thousands of people who managed to leave Cuba in that era. And, you know, as I think of it, we find ourselves in a completely different situation in 2021. In what ways? Well, effectively, it's become a lot harder for Cubans to immigrate to the United States. They are no longer welcomed as sort of the VIP immigrants that they once were in the past. They are no longer entitled to a green card just by virtue of showing up on American soil. And there are fewer visas that are being issued for people who want to join their families legally. So I think what this has led to

is a feeling of being stuck and there's nowhere to run away. And is there that same desire today to flee Cuba as there was then in the 1990s? Absolutely. You know, I think we could yet again see another exodus of people taking to the seas. We've already seen, you know, an uptick in that in the last few months, but nowhere near what we saw in the 90s. So it's an open question if, you know, this recent upheaval we saw, this wave of protests, finds a new escape valve in once again taking to the seas. Or if there's just going to be a steady buildup of pressure on the government. And will find itself with few tools at its disposal to make people's lives better, to make their incentives to rise up, to protest, to complain, go away. I can't help but think that isn't this chaos in Cuba the goal of U.S. policy? Isn't that what the policy that has shut them off economically and globally, isn't that what it's been designed to do?

I mean, absolutely. I think if you look at the past few decades of U.S. policy toward Cuba, the goal has been to squeeze the government hard enough to inflict so much pain that the system reaches a breaking point and that a new state is built from within. I think that's been the goal of several administrations. It's been the goal of exile groups to just inflict so much harm and so much pain on the Cuban state that it is no longer tenable for them to stay afloat. If Obama was the exception to how American presidents have treated Cuba, what does Joe Biden think? He was part of that administration. He is now the president. Can we expect him to follow in those footsteps? Or is this someone with their own mind about

how America should relate to the island? It's a great question. I don't think we saw Biden as vice president play a leading role in this reimagining what the relationship with Cuba could look like. You know, and so far, I don't think the rhetoric, the statements we've seen from the Biden administration in the wake of these protests give us any reason to think that we're going to go back to this era of engagement, this era of trying to treat the Cuban state in a more respectful and deferential way. What we're hearing and what we're seeing from Washington very much fits within the older playbook of confrontation, of accusations, of recrimination,

of pointing fingers to the Cuban government, which then in turn points fingers to the United States. It is a return to form. It's a return to the past, in a past that has not really delivered a more prosperous, a better life for Cubans. more prosperous, a better life for Cubans. You know, I think sitting in the U.S., it is easy to see any protest against a communist regime, particularly those in Cuba, as an inherent rejection of the government, of the whole core of revolution, of their system of government. But should we think of these protests as Cubans demonstrating against their government wholesale? Or is it about wanting the government that they

have to perform better? I guess I'm asking, is it about revolution? Or is it about reform? I think it's a little bit of both. I think it's people rebelling at feeling trapped in this status quo, being sort of pawns in this very acrimonious, dysfunctional relationship between the U.S. and Cuba, being victims of a state that is very repressive and that has been unable to build an economy that provides for people, that allows them to live decent lives. So I don't think people are just rebelling against their government. I think they're rebelling against the constellation of events, the very complicated history that brought us to where we are and that made life on the island so unbearable in this moment. Thank you, Ernesto, for your time. My pleasure.

We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. Europe is now the very first continent that presents a comprehensive architecture to meet our climate ambitions. We have the goal, but now we present the roadmap to how we are going to get there. On Wednesday, the European Union announced the world's most aggressive plan to fight climate change, a plan that, if achieved, would make its 27 countries carbon neutral by 2050. The plan calls for, among other things, raising the price of using fossil fuels, creating a carbon tax on imports, and eliminating the sale of new gas- and diesel-powered cars within just 14 years. We should go lower. We should do less. But when it comes to climate change, doing less or doing nothing literally means changing everything. And on Wednesday, U.S. health officials said that deaths from drug overdoses rose nearly 30 percent last year to 93,000, a record-breaking increase that they attributed in part to the pandemic. In explaining the increase, officials said that the coronavirus intensified conditions

that can lead to drug use, like social isolation, and disrupted drug treatments. The biggest jump in deaths occurred at the height of the pandemic. In March and April of 2020, when lockdowns began, fear was rampant and job losses multiplied. Today's episode was produced by Luke Vanderplug, Rochelle Banja, Claire Tennesketter, Annie Brown, and Stella Tan, with help from Diana Nguyen. It was edited by M.J. Davis-Lynn and engineered by Chris Wood. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.