Today, Explained - Cuba's had enough
Episode Date: July 15, 2021Cubans hit the streets for unprecedented protests against their communist government. CNN's Patrick Oppmann is on the ground in Havana with spotty wifi. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained. Support ...Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts. We are conducting an audience survey to better serve you. It takes about five minutes, and it really helps out the show. Please take our survey here: vox.com/survey Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. I'm Patrick Altman.
I'm in Havana right now where I'm based as CNN's international correspondent in Havana,
Peorchese.
Okay.
And Patrick, we've had a lot of trouble connecting with you this morning.
I don't often connect with people in Havana.
So tell me, is this always how hard it is?
Or is this because of these protests that are going on in Cuba this week?
You know, I arrived here nine years ago.
We were in the internet wilderness then.
And, you know, I'd go to my office and that was the only place I had any kind of email or anything like that.
And the internet growth has really been one of the major stories here over the years.
And after the Obama opening, they opened up the Internet here in the last couple of years.
Everyone is online all the time.
I always say it's kind of sad because everyone's looking at their phone now,
and they didn't before, but that's progress, fine.
And since Sunday night, we've gone back to the dark ages.
The Cuban government, they just took down the internet, which made it very hard for
us to report.
And now they're kind of selectively making it impossible to access apps.
But the goal, of course, is to try to keep further protests from taking place.
Okay, well, I'm glad this is working now.
So let's just talk about these protests while we have you.
How did these protests in Cuba get started this week?
So it was on Sunday.
It was not something that had been called for.
It was not something led by the island's opposition movement, which has not had a big impact over the years in terms of getting out people on a
large scale like we saw. What happened was in a small city, large town, about 45 minutes from
Havana called San Antonio de los Baños, people there were very upset because for six days they've been having power outages every day with the Apagones here and it's probably
Cubans least favorite part of the economic crisis. They're living, the power goes out.
It's the summertime in Cuba. It's stifling hot.
You go outside in the night to sleep
and you get eaten by mosquitoes.
So a lot of people in that town,
hundreds of people,
at a certain point,
just walked out their doors
and started calling on really the local government
to do something about it.
And this is not unprecedented in Cuba,
but usually when this happens,
you would hear about it a couple days later.
It would be an urban legend.
Oh, did you hear this town?
They got really upset.
This time it was live streamed.
And what happened, unlike in the past where word would slowly spread about one town where they'd had enough,
is that other towns and other cities and neighborhoods where they were sick of the current situation
and problems that everyone here is facing.
Well, they said, we're going to do the same thing.
And they took to the streets.
And I'm watching all of this unfold.
And it was just like a domino effect. I went to the ones here in Havana, and I'd never seen anything like it.
It was really something I've never witnessed in nine years of living in Cuba,
and something I frankly never thought I would see.
Has anything like this ever happened since the Cuban Revolution in the 1950s?
No. There have been protests.
There is a group of activists in our position who try to call for protests, and they usually fail,
because the government is very good at knowing who's going to go out and protest and stopping them from leaving their homes.
Previous times, you know, when there's going to be a small protest, they will take down the Internet in a part of the city where that's going to take place.
There's never been a protest where thousands of people, mostly regular people, have decided to go out and call for a change.
And it says a lot about what's different now in terms of technology
and people being connected to the outside world.
It also says a lot about how terrible the situation has gotten for many Cubans
just in the last couple of years.
For me to see Cubans in front of police saying Patria Vida, which is the new kind of anthem for change, which means that here as openly and as fearlessly as they've done over the last several days.
And there's like a song too, right? That goes with it. Yeah, so this is done by a number of artists, including a group called Gente de la Zona,
which is like the most popular Cuban group here.
They really galvanize people here.
It talks about the feelings of the revolution,
talks about the frustrations of people.
And this song, you know,
you get in trouble for playing it too loudly here.
You get in trouble if you say Patria Vida.
And it's been one of the things that led up to this.
Tell me how the government's responding.
The government's cracked down very, very hard.
That is the main response.
They have not just cut the Internet, but they've gone looking for people who were involved in the protest to arrest them.
And some people have been very badly hurt.
We know one person has been killed.
There may be more. You know, the president on Sunday night said he was giving the order to combat
to the supporters of the revolution.
There will be a revolutionary response.
And that's why we are calling on all the revolutionaries in the country,
all the communists,
to go out into the streets, anywhere,
where these provocations
are going to happen.
So you had police in right gear, which we've never really seen here before.
They've sent out special forces and they've sent out people who just what they call rapid
response brigades, which are just a group of very hard line government supporters together,
very revolutionary Cubans.
And they give them some bats and they send them in the street to break up the protests in a pretty ugly way.
And so that is one of the ways they've taken back control now.
And I think protests have been pretty much extinguished at this point.
Does that mean that whatever was happening in Cuba this week is now over?
No, because the underlying conditions are still there.
The president of Cuba came out on Wednesday night
and made one small concession,
which is people coming in the island now
will not have to pay taxes on food and medicines
and other items they bring for their families or for themselves.
And that was, you know was a pretty hated measure here that the government had for years.
That's a concession.
Is it enough?
No, it's not enough.
And that's not going to put the outrage back in the bottle.
But clearly the government is looking at what do we need to do to lower the temperature?
People are much angrier than we realize.
And what do we do to try to get some of that anger dissipated?
I'm not sure what it is they can do because the government is broke.
And a lot of it has been caused by the pandemic.
The way this island has been really, really hard hit by the pandemic.
There's no tourism, which is one of the big income generators.
And as well, the Trump administration put in some of the toughest sanctions in decades.
And those sanctions have been left in place so far by the Biden administration.
So they've absolutely had an impact.
And then last but not least is just the fact that the government has not wanted to open up, has not wanted to let people grow their businesses, has not wanted to let farmers really cultivate their land, grow enough food for the island.
People here are very frustrated with the slow pace of reforms. A lot of people who I know have been here for years, came back from living abroad, thought there was a moment where they could help their country become a different place.
Now they want to leave.
They're throwing in the towel.
They don't think there's a future here for them anymore.
I think a lot of people see these protests and they want to think, oh, communism's on the brink of failing in Cuba.
But you're telling us that the protests are now over. People are
mad at the government because of their own economic hardship. Does this mean something
for communism in Cuba? Or is this just sort of an airing of grievances in a particular moment?
I think it's something that's historic that we've never seen here before,
that kind of damages the facade the government presented that they're all knowing they've never had protests.
There's no police brutality in Cuba.
And I think people have seen that they can do it and perhaps they could do it again.
We've seen in other countries that cracking down on people doesn't make those problems go away.
It usually just
makes things more bitter and more violent. But what it perhaps could do is cause the government
here to speed up reforms and open up more, which is something they've resisted doing for a long
time, and maybe finally get the Biden administration engaged with Cuba. But the idea that this is kind of an Arab spring in Cuba
or a moment where people are going to take to the streets and force the government out,
we're not there. This is a government that the realities are still going around rounding people
up by the hundreds, I think it's safe to say. And there'll probably be people who go to jail for
some time just for being
involved in a protest, maybe just for filming a protest, for supporting a protest. You know,
the government, they're doing what they can to squash it. So just what people don't realize is
just how tough it is to be Cuban. You go to the market at 5 a.m.
when the market opens up at 10 a.m.
to wait in line.
You get inside and there's nothing to buy.
You know, there are what's up groups now
about where you can find eggs or cooking oil.
To travel around the island
when there's a shortage of gasoline
is virtually impossible.
And the Trump administration cut off remittances, so people are unable to get money from relatives
now.
And it is incredibly frustrating for people.
And then you add on top of that, you know, electricity shortages, a government that charges
you a ton of money to get a passport or to get some papers.
And people really have a bitter taste in their mouth now.
But it's also important to point out that there's no leadership behind this movement as of yet.
This is something that is very organic that happened independent of kind of the people who are the regular opposition here.
But what it's shown the government to the world is that there are thousands of people,
perhaps tens of thousands,
that want to change,
that do not accept the government's excuses
that it's all about the U.S. and it's the U.S.
They're blaming their government,
and that's something we've never seen here before.
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You've seen the Che Guevara t-shirts.
You've heard about Kennedy and the Bay of Pigs.
But we reached out to Lillian Guerra at the University of Florida
to understand what the Cuban people wanted out of it.
People were expecting a more egalitarian society.
They were not expecting
communism. And it took a long time for Cubans, even the majority had supported the changes
and were unconditional in their support for the government, to really recognize what that meant.
And what we had from 1961 to 1991 was a revolutionary regime that gave people a certain degree of social safety net and basic
needs were met. They got free health care. They got free education. But in return, total loyalty
was expected. There were all kinds of mechanisms by which people's loyalty was policed. And a lot
of the benefits of socialism were only there because the Soviets provided about $4.4 billion a year
in aid directly to Cuba between 1972 and 1988. 1991 to the present is a completely different story.
Tell me that story.
So in 1991, the Soviet Union pretty much collapsed. And so as a result, Cuba lost entirely its trading
partner. It had nobody to sell its sugar to. Its money was worthless. And the Communist Party
took radical steps, which were a shock to everybody, whereby they reversed their position
that they had held for 30 years in which, you know, foreign investors and foreign investment
and capitalism itself were demonized by the regime,
and they simply adopted those things.
So the government became the main joint partner
in working with foreign investors to create tourism,
to create the infrastructure for tourism,
to, you know, in some cases, rebuild hotels
or entirely create new facilities.
They also allowed for self-employment for the first time since 1968.
That was something scrapped at the end of the 60s.
That reform in particular came with a lot of restrictions.
The government to this day has disabled the ability of entrepreneurs to really expand their businesses precisely because they were very good at it.
Cuban citizens showed that with their little restaurants and their bed and breakfast, they could out-compete any government-owned facility with tourism. And that
meant that the state saw them as an enemy. That has created extraordinary degrees of tension because,
you know, coupled with the rise of the entrepreneurial class, you had a lot of
people who suddenly, the majority of Cubans, who suddenly had access to information from the outside
world. Seeing a Cuban speaking on his cell phone is still an unusual sight in the streets of La Habana.
Two months ago, Cubans were allowed for the very first time to own a cell phone.
Shortly after that, it became legal for Cubans to have internet access in their homes.
And then Obama's administration negotiated the right of Cubans to have free Wi-Fi provided to them by the government in the plazas and parks of Cuba.
It was part of the negotiations for normalizing relations.
Under President Castro, Cuba set a goal of bringing Cubans online, and we want to help.
So all of that has meant that Cubans have had an increasing desire and thirst for greater freedom. The U.S.-Cuba relationship is obviously of huge significance
here, but specifically the U.S. embargo on Cuba. Could you explain how it works?
Yes. So it was very different in the 60s and 70s and 80s than it was in the 90s, and that was
because the United States was able to exercise dominion over Latin American countries.
Latin American countries really went along with it.
So there was something of a unilateral trade embargo against Cuba.
Fidel Castro claimed that by the 1980s that the embargo did not affect Cuba at all because
they were completely united to the trading bloc of the Soviet Union after 1972. The idea that we have any needs
to trade with the United States should be totally eradicated.
Everything we have done during these 26 years,
we have done it without trade with the United States,
and our future has been conceived
without trade with the United States.
The embargo only rose in importance in the discourse of the political leadership in the 90s,
which is rather ironic because that's when most Latin American countries
were free of the right-wing governments or dictatorships.
One by one, you know, in the late 80s and the early 90s,
as these countries democratized themselves, they became trading partners for Cuba.
All of the European countries in the 90s, when the Communist Party opened their economy to
foreign investment, were there, you know, from the Dutch to the Canadians. I mean,
the Canadians aren't European, but certainly, you know, everybody was there except the American
companies. And they're still there, you know, the Brazilian companies, you name it. So Cuba has a lot of partners. It's just that the state controls that trade. And no small time,
you know, individual Cuban or association of Cubans is allowed to engage in that kind of
activity themselves. They're not even allowed to get loans from banks. And that's not anything to do with the U.S. government.
That's a Communist Party rule.
I think that the phrase internal embargo, which is always used in Cuba as a way to refute
the government's official narrative, you know, el embargo interno, el bloqueo interno,
the internal blockade, that's very relevant because it is part of the daily, everyday
popular culture and discourse with which Cubans fight the regime's version of reality.
Do you think supporting the Cuban people means supporting the end of communism in Cuba?
Or do you think the Cuban people would hold on to some of the concepts and sort of foundations
of communist Cuba?
Well, I think that supporting them means letting them speak for themselves. And
there is a diversity of voices that has not been allowed to be heard. If we just stepped out of
the way and allowed this to take form, whatever form it takes, Cubans will find their leaders. They have right now, you know, millions of people in Cuba
who are highly educated and who are under the age of 35. It's a third of the population.
And they themselves are the faces that we're seeing on the streets.
The debates that are happening in the household and that are now on the streets are a very healthy thing.
And it has been illegal to debate.
I mean, not even does the National Assembly debate anything, except perhaps behind closed doors.
You know, Cuban citizens are not even privy to any debate that takes place in the Council of State.
You know, so they are having this debate, you know, on the streets, I think,
just among themselves.
I'm not talking about the repressors and the security forces.
The debate among the Cubans, you know, what is it we're going to say?
To which protest are we going to go?
I mean, that is extraordinary.
And they need to be able to do this for themselves. And where do you think that debate leads?
Does it lead to some sort of capitalist Cuba?
Or does it lead to a freer sort of socialist Cuba?
Do we have any idea?
Oh, I think we do.
Cubans have, you know, at every turn,
wanted to take advantage of the capitalist economy in Cuba.
Cubans are extremely entrepreneurial,
and there are a lot of them that have made some great wealth out of the opportunity to sell their creativity. That includes artists, musicians, writers. I think that they would
like to see a reinvestment in the infrastructure of society. They want to see the fantasy of a good public health system
actually become a reality because hospitals are a nightmare. The public health system is a nightmare.
Cubans have had to rely on their relatives to send things like antibiotics. And that wasn't
yesterday. That's been for the last 25 years, that's been the case. And longer, up to 30 years,
depending on where you live. So the situation is that the
story of socialism was beautiful until 1991. And after that, it has been a myth, a complete myth,
or a fantasy that people who lived there or visited repeatedly and stayed there,
we know what the reality of this is.
So this is why Cubans are expressing this kind of collective outrage,
because they are very aware in ways that we are not of how the reality of the state is more a story,
a set of lies than it is a truth. Lillian Guerra is a professor of Cuban and Caribbean
history at the University of Florida. I'm Sean Ramos-Furham. This is Today Explained. guitar solo Thank you.