‘We are hungry’: Cubans take to the streets in the second-largest city to protest

Hundreds of people in Santiago de Cuba, Cuba’s second-largest city, protested on the streets on Sunday, chanting “electricity and food” and “Patria y Vida,” homeland and life, in what appeared the largest demonstration on the island since the July 2021 uprising.

A video live stream on Facebook by an anonymous user at 3:38 p.m. on Sunday showed a large crowd protesting along Santiago’s Carretera del Morro Avenue. Activist Yasmany Labrada, a former Santiago dissident who currently lives in Washington, D.C., published other videos of the protest, where Santiago residents can be heard chanting “we are hungry” and the presence of military forces at the scene.

As Cubans reported a cut in internet service, videos started to appear on Sunday evening, also showing protests in Bayamo, one of Cuba’s oldest cities in the eastern province of Granma, in Cacocún, in the eastern province of Holguín, and in Santa Marta, a town in Matanzas close to the sea resort of Varadero.

On Monday, there were reports of protests in Bayamo and El Cobre, a town in Santiago de Cuba province where the National Shrine Basilica of Our Lady of Charity is located. The group Justicia 11J, which monitors arrests of demonstrators in Cuba, said that at least three people had been detained during the protests.

News agency EFE reported that the protests started in Santiago de Cuba in front of a government building, with mothers complaining they could not feed their children, following hours without electricity. Later on Sunday, hundreds of people joined, forcing the top Communist Party official in the province, Beatriz Johnson, to climb on a house roof to shout to protesters that the government would provide donated milk enough for five days along with products. Videos show how women in the crowd, many carrying their children, dismissed the official with chants of “Freedom” and “No more bullsh.…”

In a video on X, Johnson later said that the people who expressed dissatisfaction with the distribution of food and the blackouts “were respectful and listened attentively.”

Cuban authorities and state media confirmed the protests on Sunday evening, a rare admission suggesting the government wants to avoid the sort of international backlash that followed the violent crackdown on protesters during the island-wide July 11, 2021, demonstrations. The government detained and imposed harsh sentences on hundreds of those protesters. But the past government repression did not deter protesters in Santiago and other cities, spurred by the spiraling economy.

In an English post on X, Cuban vice Foreign Minister Carlos Fernandez de Cossio was the first Cuban official to acknowledge the protest, which he blamed on a “destabilization effort” from the United States and the effects of the decades-old U.S. embargo on the island. Later Sunday evening, Cuban leader Miguel Diaz-Canel repeated a similar message.

“Several people have expressed their dissatisfaction with the electrical service and food distribution situation,” Diaz-Canel said on X. “In the last few hours, we have seen how terrorists based in the U.S., whom we have denounced on repeated occasions, encourage actions against the country’s internal order.”

It is unclear if he is referring to the activists who started sharing the videos on social media.

But this time, Díaz-Canel tried to strike a more conciliatory tone, in contrast to his message in 2021, when he urged communists to confront the protesters on the streets.

“The authorities of the Party, the State and the Government are willing to address the complaints of our people, listen, dialogue, explain the numerous efforts being made to improve the situation, always in a calm atmosphere,” he said.

Cubadebate, a state media outlet, reported the protest in Santiago, noting that the police officers at the scene “are only guarding the demonstration and talking directly with the citizens.”

Food shortages have grown worse in recent months in Cuba, where the government said it didn’t have the resources to continue providing food rations regularly, including bread and milk for young children. Agricultural production has also plummeted, and inflation is making food prices unaffordable for most Cubans.

The situation is so dire that for the first time, Cuban authorities asked for aid from the World Food Program, a United Nations humanitarian agency, to provide milk for young children.

Hours-long electricity blackouts are common almost daily in places like Santiago de Cuba and other provinces. Residents in Bayamo reported 12-hour electricity cuts daily in recent days.

Cuban authorities blame the U.S. embargo for the economic debacle. While economists believe the sanctions and the COVID-19 pandemic have aggravated the situation, they point to Cuba’s central plan economy and several botched policies as the main reasons for the current crisis.

But on X, several diplomats aggressively pushed the embargo narrative after the U.S. embassy in Havana published a note urging the government to respect the human rights of the protesters.

On Monday, Cossío handed a formal note of protest to Benjamin Ziff, the head of the U.S. embassy in Havana. The ministry of Foreign Affairs said Cossío forcefully rejected “the interventionist behavior and slanderous messages of the U.S. government and its embassy in Cuba regarding Cuban internal affairs.”

A U.S. State Department spokesperson said Monday that claiming the United States was behind the protests in Cuba was “absurd.”

On Monday afternoon, Brian Nichols, the assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, responded to Cuban authorities on X.

“The United States stands with the Cuban people as they exercise their rights to assemble peacefully,” he said. “The Cuban government will not be able to meet the needs of its people until it embraces democracy and the rule of law and respects the rights of Cuban citizens.”