Protests in Cuba: “American factor” bursts into Cuban crisis | International

the factor EE UU it burst into the open crisis after the July 11 and 12 protests in Cuba, which is becoming more and more international. The new sanctions announced last Thursday by the Joe Biden administration, which had so far declared Cuba was not a priority and was reviewing its policy towards the island, again pave the way for diplomatic clashes and threaten to shut down doors to hope some kind of relief can come from Washington for the dire economic situation the country is going through.

It won’t be like that, at least for now. The American strategy complicates the solution of an explosive scenario, at times of great discontent of the population because of the hardships that are being lived, with the economy in the red, the epidemic galloping and the government shrinking, and when the very summary trials against hundreds of detainees in the demonstrations, mostly young people.

Washington’s pressure and sanctions dynamic tends to rock Havana, seasoned observers warn. And that is perhaps why, on Thursday, even the most critical of the government of Miguel Díaz-Canel saw as a bad omen the announcement of the administration of Joe Biden that it will sanction the Minister of Defense, Álvaro López. Miera, and the Special National Brigade – an elite Home Office corps popularly known as the Black Berets – for the crackdown by security forces during protests that rocked the island on July 11 .

“Switch off and go,” said, just after hearing the news, a retired professional whose son was arrested during the protests in Fraternidad Park and released the next day. It was a reunion of friends, and at that point they spoke with concern of the first summary conviction convictions, up to a year in prison for public disorder and contempt, pointing out that even voices close to officiality demanded that all peaceful protesters be released and only those who participated in acts of violence stand trial.

Cuando el grupo supo de las declaraciones de Biden, en el sentido de que “esto es solo el principio” y que “Estados Unidos seguirá sancionando a los individuals responsible for the sober opresión el pueblo cubano”, hubo varios que se echaron las manos a the head. “With the United States there is no solution, comrade,” lamented one of those who until then had shouted the most against the condemnations of the demonstrators.

Immediately after, what had to happen happened. Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez called a press conference in which he again accused Washington of being behind the July 11 protests, of encouraging manipulation via social media to provoke the destabilization of the country and exacerbating to impossible limits the economic embargo to aggravate the crisis and the difficulties of the island. Regarding the sanctions imposed on the Minister of the Armed Forces and the Black Berets, he said they were “politically motivated and intentional, and totally irrelevant from a practical point of view.”

The United States, he said, does not have “the slightest authority, neither legal, nor political, nor moral, to go and sanction people all over the world when we know that they are behaving badly enough. in terms of repression “, adding that he has” no moral authority to demand the release of those detained in Cuba: it is an act of interference and intervention in our internal affairs “. Chancellor denied that most protesters were peaceful and called on Washington to demonstrate that there were “missing” and minors under arrest, assuring that what had happened was not “a riot social “, but that they were violent riots, and that those who will be prosecuted for this reason, they will have” all the guarantees of Cuban law “.

There is still no official number of detainees, nor a report on the number of people who will be brought to justice, an issue that is now at the center of discussions on social media – the internet is working again – or increasingly. more people from the world of Culture are speaking out against the strong hand in the trials and calling for the complaints of police abuse filed by some of those arrested to be investigated.

In this tense environment, where increasingly critical voices are being heard, and in the midst of a deep crisis that sees no end and which is at the root of the unease that has led people to the protests, the factor EE UU becomes the key. “If they had a minimum of intelligence they would lift the blockade now, what they are doing is strengthening the toughest positions inside,” said the father of the young man arrested on 11-J .

There is a whole consensus that the United States, instead of adding more gasoline to the fire, would do well to provide water to put it out, especially when the crisis tends to internationalize. . Havana again accused Washington of having evidence of its pressure on various governments in the former Eastern Europe and also on Latin American countries to condemn Cuba, which some have already done. Meanwhile, other nations like Spain are trying to maintain equidistance and call for solidarity and humanitarian aid in these times of pandemic, while condemning the police violence used to silence the protest and criticize the embargo.

This Friday, New York The Times published a letter from 400 intellectuals, politicians, artists, scientists and former heads of state calling on the White House to immediately lift the more than 240 sanctions adopted by Donald Trump during his tenure “which hamper Cuba’s efforts to control the pandemic ”. . Cinema personalities like Jane Fonda, Susan Sarandon, Danny Glover and Mark Ruffalo are signed, or former presidents like Lula da Silva (Brazil) and Rafael Correa (Ecuador).

As summary trials and prison terms roll in, in Havana and other cities the lineups and shortages persist and the pandemic advances. Renowned Cuban economists have actively and passively declared that the intensification of the embargo, the financial persecution and the supply of oil, and the effect of the Helms-Burton law to discourage investment have exacerbated the crisis. But they stress that it is the structural inefficiency of the productive system and the economic reforms so often postponed, as well as the lack of space for debate to discuss the different visions, that have put the country on the ropes. There is a consensus that the solutions are internal and depend solely on the government’s willingness to introduce far-reaching reforms, and not corrective measures, to improve the situation. But that the role of the United States is also an important factor.