A massive protest
movement broke out in Cuba in July
of 2021.
Food, medicine
and electricity shortages
exacerbated by the COVID pandemic
were pushing an already desperate,
oppressed and impoverished nation
to the brink of a rebellion.
Demonstrators used the internet,
which has only been legally
available in the country since 2018,
to coordinate action in large
and small cities across the island.
So the Cuban government quickly
arrested hundreds of protesters
and shut down the internet.
Video of a YouTuber being pulled
out of her room in the middle of a
Spanish news broadcast went viral.
Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel
appeared on state TV to call for
the violent suppression of the
protests against
counter-revolutionaries
In Miami, members of the sizable
Cuban-American population plan to
load their own fishing boats with
supplies to make the 90 mile journey
to the island themselves,
but were deterred by the U.S.
Coast Guard.
They set off fireworks in
international waters off the coast
of Cuba instead.
I think what people don't understand
is that the problem in Cuba stems
from the fact that people can't do
anything for themselves.
How do you feed yourself?
How do you make money?
You're only allowed to make money if
the government says it's OK.
And that's how the government
throttles people.
They'll throw you in jail if you
decide to try and feed your family
on your own.
Martha Bueno is a Cuban-American
activist who started the group
People for Cuba following the
protests.
They assemble packages of dry foods
and medical supplies and then pay
people thirty five dollars a pound
to smuggle them onto the island.
They've shipped more than 800 pounds
so far, but she says it's become
more difficult in recent months as
the Cuban government has cracked
down on smuggled supplies.
The big reason that we have to
smuggle it into Cuba is because if I
send it legitimately through
the Cuban government, if I raise
thousands of dollars and send a
container ship of medicine to Cuba,
the Cuban government will take that
and then sell it in the stores.
And I wanted it to be humanitarian
aid people who needed it to be able
to receive it without paying.
And I especially won't help the
Cuban government.
I refuse to fundraise,
paid for and then give it to them
so that they can sell it in the
stores. I'm not that kind of girl.
She certainly isn't in one of her
most popular tweets.
Bueno, an outspoken libertarian,
wrote "When my father was 21,
he was sentenced to six years in
prison for attempting to leave his
country, Cuba.
A year into his sentence, my
fearless mother broke him out of
jail.
You might want to trade your freedom
for safety, but I sure as hell
don't.".
How did hearing these family stories
growing up affect your political
outlook and your view of current
day events in Cuba?
How can it not?
How can it not affect my political
views when I can contrast?
I can get on an airplane here and
leave and go anywhere, which I
do love to travel.
And every time I get on an airplane,
I think about that how that
simple action of trying to leave
your country landed my father
with a six year sentence.
I mean, everything in my life.
I can draw parallel to what's
happening in Cuba.
Cuba wasn't always that way.
Political decisions
have led to people not having those
freedoms. So of course, I'm going to
defend the freedoms we have.
I just I feel like there's no other
way.
With the Cuban government, they're
they'e.
They are.
They are not government.
They are no government.
They are a mob.
Danny Lugo came to America from
Cuba 22 years ago and manages
logistics for Bueno's operation.
He says that even though the
communist dictatorship has survived
for 63 years, the courage
and independence of Cuba's youth
give him hope that change is finally
coming.
I think there is a new generation
of Cubans, young Cubans
that have not been
brainwashed, so
that's how our hub.
And we want to help us,
I mean that generation to,
you know, to to
win the freedom.
But one Cuban citizen who spoke to
us anonymously for fear of
retribution from the government says
that the regime, led by President
Miguel Diaz-Canel, still
has an ironclad grip on power
and is able to quash the
demonstrations at will by cutting
off the internet and electricity.
Withholding supplies and arresting
and deporting dissidents.
We saw July 11, was by
far the most
important the largest, the most
widespread and
the most political,
openly political
of public demonstrations
against the region.
Sebastian Arcos is the associate
director of the Cuban Research
Institute at Florida International
University.
His father was a political activist
imprisoned for years by Castro.
He later died of cancer after being
denied treatment by the regime's
politicized health care system.
Arcos points to the protests last
summer as a sign that the internet
is eroding the state's power.
It allowed the July protests to
spread farther than has
ever been seen under the communist
regime, which he says is slowly
but surely crumbling
Since the collapse of the Soviet
Union, the regime has been
slowly decomposing.
This is a an established
process by the
academic literature is known as both
totalitarian evolution
and is an inevitable process
of decomposition
of the regime.
The regime begins to lose
the basic pillars, the first
one to go was ideology.
The people in the regime, they say
they believe it, but they drive BMWs
they are practicing capitalism
while they preach socialism
or communism to the rest of the
population. No one believes in them.
Then Castro dies.
The charismatic leader,
the man who
represents that
path towards paradise
is gone.
Finally, they don't.
They can't mobilize people anymore
because no one believes in what
they say anymore.
He says that the process of reform
in totalitarian communist states
often involves cycles of opposition
and repression.
The regime is now engaged in
pure naked repression.
What they're trying to do is trying
to rebuild the terror,
the state terror that Fidel Castro
successfully built in the early
60s that they lost.
And people will come out into the
streets again.
Meanwhile, most Cubans
are just looking for their next
meal. According to the source, we
spoke with
The Cuban government blames the dire
situation on the trade embargo
the U.S. has placed on the country.
Bueno says the embargo is a
scapegoat.
It's not the embargo that
causes Cubans to face these
problems.
It's the Cuban government that
causes them. Cuba's an island, and
yet people are banned
from fishing.
You can't grow any food.
You're not allowed to do the
simplest of things.
The Cuban government looks to have
regained control after stopping
a second protest in November.
But Bueno and Arco say the
status quo can't hold.
I think things are changing.
You see it now.
You see people actually questioning
the Cuban government.
I really believe
that that's going
to lead a change that
cryptocurrencies, the ability
to go outside the government for
money is going to be
a game changer.
Every time they arrest a 16
year-old and they sentence
someone to 25
years in jail.
They are creating entire
families and neighborhoods of
opponents, so
they are feeding the opposition.
This is not Fidel Castro's
classic totalitarian regime
of the 60s and 70s.
It's a completely different animal.
It's weak, it has
been wounded.
If Raul Castro dies
and is buried, we will see
fractures within the Communist
Party. Some people will refuse, to
repress the population
in the streets.
That is how the Czechoslovak
Communist Party and the Communist
Party in East Germany collapse.
That is exactly how they
collapse.