the new dissent raising its voice against the Cuban government

On January 12, 2017, a week before stepping down from power, Barack Obama slammed the door on Cuban families. He eliminated the “dry feet, wet feet” policy that allowed all Cubans who set foot on North American soil to stay. This policy ended in dangerous crossings and extortion, but also in the hope of sending a relative north, who would guarantee his future, and that he could support those who remained on the island.

Obama, during his visit to the island, said: “Our grandchildren will see this isolation as an aberration. The future of Cuba must be in the hands of the Cuban people ”. But closed an escape route, in possible conflict situations.

The coronavirus pandemic has worsened day by day on the streets of the island. In the hard blockade, the lack of supplies and closure of tourism. It was impossible to keep one’s distance in the many lines to buy basic goods. Only dollar stores remain stocked.

And from this same week, there is an additional concern about the effects that the drastic devaluation that the disappearance of the Cuban peso will have on daily life and its approval in monetary terms to the so-called convertible peso. A measure that will inevitably lead to price hikes and that economists predict will lead to a rising inflation.

The main sources of Cuba’s resources depend on foreign countries. From its professionals who work in other countries, from family remittances – most of which come from the United States – and tourism.

Every time differences between families who have access to the dollar and those who live only on wages in Cuban pesos. And in the midst of the economic crisis – four years after Fidel Castro’s death – political sparks have erupted.

The new dissidents

This time, the protagonists were very young dissidents. On November 8, anti-establishment rapper Denís Solís, 31, was arrested. A swift trial sentenced him to eight months in prison for “contempt”. More specifically, for his treatment of the policeman who entered his home.

In protest, his colleagues from San Isidro Movement, from Old Havana, coordinated by 33-year-old artist Luis Miguel Otero Alcántara, has been locked in the organization’s headquarters since November 16. Two days later, when their food supply was cut off, they went on a hunger strike. There are those who accuse them of being “marginal”, but the youth and variety of the members are surprising, around 18 or 21 years old.

Poets, environmentalists, art teachers, the Christian and Muslim movement, members of LGTBI groups, as well as a scientist and a journalist, gathered on site. He joined the group after arriving from the airport without confirming the result of his PCR test. One night, taking advantage of this fact, in order to guarantee the covid protocol, the authorities expelled them.

The reaction to the retentions of this moment, known on the Internet, was that a hundred artists and intellectuals stood in front of the Ministry of Culture.

On November 27, the group remained in front of the ministerial headquarters with no intention of leaving. Every 15 minutes, they applauded, demanding to meet the authorities, in what has been called “the applause revolution”.

Dialogue?

After a long wait, 32 representatives of the sit-in met within the ministry the Deputy Minister of Culture, Fernando Rojas. They were accompanied by actor Jorge Perugorría and director Fernando Pérez Valdés. They concluded what they considered to be “fundamental agreements”. Had opened a channel of dialogue and they began to follow him. They believed that independent artists could now come together without being harassed.

For the professor of history Rafael Rojas, brother of the vice-minister, who lives in Mexico, there will be “a before and an after” of this moment. “The greatest success of this Friday 27 was not the promise to stop repressing, which a state like that of Cuba will never be able to keep. But for forcing the authorities to negotiate. This is something they will not be able to hide from the strikers in San Isidro, ”he said.

Demonstration on the networks

During these days, the activists made each movement known through the networks. Its great orator; the phones. Today, any abuse of power is denounced from the mobile, whether in Havana, Beijing or Sabadell. The strikers or their friends reported their version of events on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram. It has also been reported by new digital media such as Periodismo de Barrio, El Estornudo, Tremenda Nota or Rialta ediciones.

“The Applause Revolution” had a traditional columnist. This is the 31-year-old Cuban journalist and writer Carlos Manuel Álvarez. It was he who joined the San Isidro strike and described these hours and their personal significance, to The Washington Post , The country and The New York Times. His thesis is that “maintaining a staged silence of Cubans in the midst of the crisis is a luxury the government cannot afford and social discontent is visible.”

After the first moments, the government of Miguel Díaz-Canel and the official media they accused the strikers of “mercenaries”. His supporters staged repudiation protests in front of dissident homes. The police carried out arrests, interrogations and home surveillance. One of those who suffered the most is chronicler Álvarez.

December 4 the Ministry of Culture has closed, from its website, any possibility of agreement with the so-called “independent artists”; “They have long excluded themselves for their attacks against national symbols, common crimes, frontal attacks against the leaders of the Cuban revolution, under the guise of art. The Department of Culture will not meet with people in direct contact and will not receive funding, logistical support, and propaganda from the United States government.

Joe Biden’s expectations

On January 20, 2021, Joe Biden will become the new North American president. A new generation of Cuban Americans are living in the United States who voted for the Democratic candidate because they believe it will be better for the daily life of their home country.

Over the next four years, Washington’s policy of rapprochement with Cuba may have more practical effects than in the days of Barack Obama. If the Democrats get – after the election in the state of Georgia on January 5 – a majority in the Senate, that could mean the beginning of the end of the Helms-Burton law or, even of the historic blockade, the ”.

As for the “internal blockade”, aware of this possible change of scenery, the Cuban government prefers to give an image of authority. We will have to see in the coming months whether a historical curse is truncated. When the positions between Washington and Havana can finally come closer, someone extreme on either side of the Straits of Florida truncates it and makes it impossible again.

“The applause revolution” served to make clear an aspiration of the intellectual world. In the universities of the island, they wonder if uniformity is strength.

Professor Esther Suárez Durán, of La Joven Cuba, analyzes the internal critic: “It does not appear that this can be seen as an isolated event. It is a sign of the most sensitive parts of the social fabric, realizing the need of the children of this land to have the necessary participation. The signals are clear: civil society needs space right now. Bureaucratic socialism must give way to participatory socialism. “

After the first generation of Trovas, one of the first protest songs in Cuba was Guillermo Tell, by author Carlos Varela. The lyrics read: “Guillermo Tell did not understand his son, who one day was bored with an apple on his head. It’s up to him to prove his worth … ”They are no longer children, like Carlos Varela who is 57 years old, they are the grandchildren of revolutionaries or great-grandchildren, those who ask for passage.

by Vincenç Sanclemente

CB