Sunday started “quietly” in the city of Santiago de Cuba. This comes after the Cuban government tried to quell large-scale protests that began on Calle Carretera del Morro in Santiago de Cuba and spread to several states, one of the Cuban cities told El Paz. This is based on residents. Cubans took to the streets Sunday to protest power and food shortages. In response to the demonstrations, the government sent trucks loaded with food to a warehouse in the city of Santiago de Cuba, and Beatriz Johnson Urrutia, first secretary of the party in the state of the same name, said the government would immediately deliver rice and sugar. Ta. to the population.
“The trucks that supposedly arrived do not mean they will start selling rice, sugar and milk to the people. They will just distribute this month's worth of rice and sugar that did not arrive. They will deliver milk to children. We haven’t,” said a Santiago de Cuba resident on condition of anonymity. The witness said the situation was otherwise calm. “As usual, everything is quiet here. Last night there was a power outage and the city was in total darkness, so we had no choice but to go back home.” It added that police patrols and national security personnel were guarding the city.
Although protests appear to have subsided in Santiago de Cuba, there were signs of violence Monday in the town of El Cobre, also in Santiago de Cuba province. Videos posted on social media showed residents shouting “freedom” outside police headquarters and demanding the release of those arrested on Sunday. Sources told EL PAÍS that street demonstrations were also held in the towns of La Coloma and El Cayuco on Monday. Continuous cell phone service outages and difficult access to the internet make it impossible to see or record events from the island.
Deployment of troops and arrests
Street protests were recorded in several Cuban municipalities until the early hours of March 18. In Bayamo, one of Cuba's most historically important cities and the birthplace of the national anthem, Cubans took to the streets to sing the national anthem, and the government responded with a crackdown. . Several videos recorded in the city, which residents burned down in 1860 to fight Spanish occupation, showed police officers beating citizens as they fled arrest. The footage also shows soldiers from the Special Forces (Black Wasp) trying to quell the demonstrations.
Near midnight on Sunday, residents in the town of Cárdenas in the western part of the island took part in a protest by banging pots and pans during a power outage that lasted several hours. A young man and a mother with a child walked through the Santa Marta neighborhood of Cárdenas. Some took to the streets in Alquizar and San Antonio de los Baños. Outside the country, Cuban exiles demonstrated from the legendary Versailles restaurant in Miami to the headquarters of the Cuban embassy in Montevideo, Uruguay.
Sunday's demonstrations recalled the historic protests that took place across Cuba on July 11 and 12, 2021. Thousands of people gathered in protest, making it the largest demonstration since the victory of the Cuban revolution.
The Cuban government on Sunday used police repression to contain protests, as it did in 2021. Organizations that independently track the number of detainees in Cuba found it difficult to record all arrests. Cubalex and Justicia 11J were able to identify at least four of her people who were “violently” detained. The whereabouts of some of these detainees remain unknown.
On Sunday, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel posted a series of messages on his X account, acknowledging the public's dissatisfaction with “the situation with electricity services and food distribution.” The president said that considering the situation, authorities “want to respond to the demands of the people.” But on Monday, Diaz-Canel accused “mediocre politicians and terrorists” in South Florida of “causing trouble in the streets of Cuba.” The president said authorities had effectively shut down the demonstrations, claiming the people were “left wanting more.”
Foreign Minister Carlos Fernández de Cossio also called the protests a “desperate attempt by the United States to destabilize Cuba.” Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez made a similar argument, saying that if the United States was “concerned for the well-being of the Cuban people,” it would lift the economic “blockade” and “remove Cuba from the list of suspected state sponsors of terrorism.” ” he added. ”
Sunday's protests may have ended with calls for “freedom,” but the demonstrations began with demands for “food” and “electricity.” Even the Cuban government admits that the country's economic crisis is comparable to the so-called “special period” of the 1990s. Cubans are currently suffering from hours-long power outages and shortages of food and medicine. And it looks like things are only going to get worse.
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