Cubans find anger in their souls

Thousands took to the streets last week in rare protests and the government is scrambling to crush signs of dissent

-  Ruaridh Nicoll HAVANA

There’s a man from the government playing love songs in the park. Orlando Fuentes has a table and an awning against the hard Caribbean sun. Silvio Rodr íguez ’s Cita con Ángeles floats from his sound system. A woman says she can’t listen, that it’s a beautiful song ruined by being played at too many government rallies.

After 16 months of Covid and a week of unprecedented protests, the Cuban government wants to soothe the anger. Music is being played in parks across the country.

“I call for solidarity and not to let hatred take over the Cuban soul, which is a soul of goodness, affection and love,” tweeted President Miguel DíazCanel. Only days earlier he had called his supporters onto the streets to face down “vulgar, indecent and delinquent” protesters, demonstrating against food and medicine shortages, rising prices and power cuts.

The protests started on 11 July in the town of San Antonio de Los Baños, on the outskirts of Havana. Residents were complaining of blackouts that lasted more than eight hours.

Videos of people chanting “libertad” (freedom), swiftly spread on social media, on a mobile internet that Cubans have only been allowed to use for the past three years. Protests flared the length and breadth of the island. Police cars were turned over and rocks were thrown. A few of the hated MLC stores – where necessities are sold only in foreign currencies – were looted.

Hundreds of arrests were made, often documented in harrowing videos. Nothing like it had been seen in Cuba since the 1959 revolution. Raúl Castro, Fidel’s 90 -year-old brother who retired as first secretary of the communist party last April, came back to advise.