Thousands of protesters take to the streets in Cuba

HAVANA, July 11 (Reuters) – Thousands of Cubans took to the streets from Havana to Santiago on Sunday in rarely seen protests, expressing frustration with economic conditions, the pace of COVID-19 vaccinations and this which they called government negligence.

President Miguel Diaz-Canel, who also heads the Communist Party, blamed the United States for the unrest in a nationally televised speech on Sunday afternoon.

Special forces jeeps, with rear-mounted machine guns, were seen in the capital, Havana, and Diaz-Canel called on his supporters to face the “provocations.”

Thousands of people gathered in downtown Havana and along parts of the seaside promenade amid a heavy police presence. There have been a few arrests and scuffles.

A Reuters reporter saw police spray pepper spray on a few protesters and beat others with batons, but there was no attempt to directly confront the thousands of people chanting “Freedom” as they stood. gathered and marched in the city center. Their cries of “Diaz-Canel resign” drowned out groups of government supporters chanting “Fidel”.

Protests erupted in the municipality of San Antonio de los Banos, in the province of Artemisa, on the border with Havana, with a video on social media showing hundreds of residents chanting anti-government slogans and demanding everything , coronavirus vaccines at the end of daily power cuts.

“I just walked through town looking to buy food and there were a lot of people there, some with signs, protesting,” local resident Claris Ramirez said over the phone.

“They are protesting against the power cuts, that there are no drugs,” she added.

Diaz-Canel, who had just returned from San Antonio de los Banos, said many protesters were sincere but manipulated by social media campaigns orchestrated by the United States and “mercenaries” on the ground, and warned that further “provocations” would not be tolerated.

There were protests later on Sunday hundreds of miles (km) east in Palma Soriano, Santiago de Cuba, where a social media video showed hundreds of people walking the streets, again confirmed by a local resident.

“They are protesting against the crisis, that there is no food or medicine, that everything has to be bought in foreign currency shops, and so on,” said Claudia Perez.

ECONOMIC CRISIS

“We call on all revolutionaries in the country, all communists, to take to the streets wherever there is an effort to produce these provocations,” Diaz-Canel said in his broadcast remarks.

The communist-ruled country has been experiencing a worsening economic crisis for two years, which the government blames mainly on US sanctions and the pandemic, while critics cite incompetence and a Soviet-style one-party system.

A combination of sanctions, local inefficiencies and the pandemic has shut down tourism and slowed other foreign income streams in a country that depends on it to import most of its food, fuel and inputs for tourism. agriculture and manufacturing.

The economy contracted 10.9% last year and 2% until June 2021.

There has been an increase in COVID-19 cases and deaths this year, with a record 6,900 cases and 47 deaths reported on Saturday.

Cuba has two vaccines and has launched a mass vaccination campaign, with 1.7 million of its 11.2 million people vaccinated to date and twice as many at various stages of the three-step process.

Reporting by Marc Frank; Additional reporting by Sarah Marsh, Nelson Acosta and Reuters TV; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Peter Cooney

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