[ Will the current situation in Cuba lead to US-backed violence in
Cuba? To answer that question, we first need an understanding of
what’s happening. There has been ongoing violence from the United
States towards Cuba for 60 years.] [[link removed]]

WHAT’S HAPPENING IN CUBA?  
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Merriam Ansara
July 20, 2021
Peace Advocate [[link removed]]

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_ Will the current situation in Cuba lead to US-backed violence in
Cuba? To answer that question, we first need an understanding of
what’s happening. There has been ongoing violence from the United
States towards Cuba for 60 years. _

People carry a poster with photographs of Fidel Castro, President
Miguel Diaz-Canel and former president Raul Castro during a rally in
Havana on July 17, 2021, Alexandre Meneghini / Reuters // Peace
Advocate

 

The violence isn’t new. In fact, there has been ongoing violence
from the United States towards Cuba for 60 years—from an economic
embargo that prevents US companies from trading with Cuba and
encourages other countries not to do so, to military, ideological, and
cultural violence. And that doesn’t include the violence and
occupation following the U.S. invasion of Cuba in the so-called
Spanish-American war in the late 1800s.

Here is a video of violence in the City of Cardenas, (a city that that
is also the center of a huge surge in Covid-19 cases (roughly 600
cases in a city of 115,000)).  [link removed]
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The United States and right wing organizations across Latin America
instigated, supported, and provided money to these movements.
Additionally, there were several high-level threats in Washington, as
well as some at low levels; however, the low-level threats were
largely orchestrated by private citizens (some Cuban-Americans) who
want to live here but want also to push for change in Cuba.  There is
some risk that the United States government will take action, but
this is mainly about trying to create a “soft coup”.

Most of the recent protesters in Cuba were peaceful. What was
concerning, however, was the number of people falling in with what was
really a provocation out of a sense of despair.

But here is my view, keeping in mind that I have spent 11 of the last
18 months in Cuba. People have gone through 17 months of pandemic and
hardship.  When I returned from Cuba to Massachusetts in June, people
were exhausted and were finding daily life very difficult due to
shortages. Not only that but the constant stress of following the
strict protocols for Covid was difficult, however, as vaccinations
began, people saw there seemed to be light at the end of the tunnel. 
Soon after the Beta and Delta variants emerged, the virus just bloomed
— from a barely imaginable 2,000 cases one month —
to nearly 7,000 the next. So there was now the renewed stress and
fear of contracting the virus before one could get vaccinated and the
ongoing stress of shortages in not just food but medicines as well.

You couldn’t find antibiotics, or analgesics or colostomy bags. 
You had to stand in hours-long lines to buy horrible-tasting US
chicken, or spend high amounts of money to buy it from resellers. 
There was a month of shortage of cooking oil (I finally found some
online to send to my family at $22 for a liter).  And then with the
surge in Matanzas/Cardenas, a large quantity of the already scarce
supplies had to be rushed to that province for hospitalized positive
cases and isolated contacts.

The minister of planning said the other day that it costs about 4,500
pesos a day in food, supplies, equipment, and medicine to care for a
single patient in hospital care with Covid.  It costs 13,045 pesos a
day for someone in intensive care.

This is almost equivalent to the combined salary of my nephew and his
wife –5000 pesos a month.

Doctors and nurses from all over the country had to rush to the areas
of the surge, Matanzas especially.  They even had to rush doctors and
nurses from all over the country and even home to some of the Henry
Reeve Brigade.  Healthcare workers then had to figure out how to get
enough bed space and enough electricity. The surge stressed the
already at-risk electric grid because of blocked oil deliveries,
resulting in blackouts elsewhere. For many people, this was the final
straw.

At the same time, it was becoming pretty clear that Biden was not
going to do anything to lift any of Trump’s 243 measures against
Cuba, including, the ability of U.S.-based families to send
remittances to their Cuban family members from the U.S.

The hard currency stores were the hardest hit by vandals during the
protests — see the video.  These stores were expanded in January
because the hard currency income and earnings of the government had
been reduced by millions and millions of dollars in 2020, and then
even further, and substantially reduced just in the first six6 months
of 2021.  Not only must Cuban entities purchase everything abroad
that they can’t produce, but they are also restricted by the Embargo
in their purchases abroad, which are in hard currency. At the start of
2021, the Cuban Ministry of Domestic Trade expanded the special stores
where you could buy imported goods using hard currency to include
imported food items as well as just imported appliances and car parts.
This step was seen as one of the few ways to capture the scarce hard
currency circulating in the country to be used to make further
purchases abroad, something only a limited number of some people could
access.

Well, it’s hard for ordinary people to understand how complicated
all of this is, let alone accept it, even when they do understand it.
It all just does not seem fair.  And the fact is simple: really,
people just want someone to fix the problem. And when it’s not
fixed, as in most places, people blame the government.  The U.S.
embargo can seem intangible; the government is right there and
supposedly committed to guaranteeing the quality of life, in the Cuban
concept.

In Cuba, there are groups of people who hate the government, hate
the system, and just want to be able to live the way people in
capitalist countries live. There is another group of people who really
have a problem with the way so much is centralized, for a variety of
reasons and beliefs. And then there were simply a large number of
people who simply felt they couldn’t take it anymore.  Yes, they
had their first, second, and some even third dose of the vaccine, but
it seemed as though that wasn’t going to change anything, and
certainly not any time soon.

I think it also is evident that there is an even a larger majority of
people who also are exhausted and anxious, but who think and believe
that the only way forward is to keep doing what they are doing: 
working with the government and systems in place to try to push
forward through this twin disaster of Covid 19 and Biden’s
recalcitrance.  The alternative is to leave each person and their
family on their own, effectively throwing out everything they’ve
worked for and sacrificed to the dogs.  They turned out _en masse_,
Saturday July 17, taking a risk of Covid to make clear their support
for going forward.

I’ll end with what my 20-year-old niece, who is Cuban, wrote to me
just after the protests of July 11:

_“I am just so stressed.  I don’t understand anything and I just
want it to end.  I’m stressed by the whole situation of Covid, the
being locked inside all the time, the long lines, the prices, and now
on top of everything these protests that don’t accomplish
anything.  I am just so worn out.  I feel like a canary in a cage
and I don’t like being locked up.  Every day I go from work to home
and back again.  I need to go out, I need to see things, I need to do
things.”_

She did not attend turn out in the streets forthe protests as she said
they simply stressed her more.

Here is a petition that I hope everyone will not just sign but pass on
far and wide.  It was put together by a diverse group of individuals
nationally, some affiliated with Cuba solidarity groups and others
not:  EMERGENCY RELIEF FOR CUBA
[[link removed]].  And
all who can might consider going to Washington DC to join the protest
July  25  led by the Cuban American group Puentes de Amor
[[link removed]] that
just walked from Florida to Washington to protest the US embargo on
Cuba.   You can get more information about writing to this email.

_Thanks to the author for sending this to xxxxxx._

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