Protests, even small ones, rarely happen in Cuba. The reason has nothing to do with popular contentment and everything to do with the law.
Over the past six decades most Cubans have made the entirely rational calculation that open criticism of their government is too dangerous. It is not worth it.
The Cuban constitution, based on a Soviet blueprint, contains a draconian warning. It spells out that no behaviour, no freedom, will be tolerated if it is deemed “contrary to the existence and objectives of the socialist state, or contrary to the decision of the Cuban people to build socialism and communism”.
That is a catch-all and means that being considered “counter-revolutionary” is tantamount to being a criminal. Being a revolutionary, in contrast, is aligned with patriotism.
This is the mindset of Miguel Díaz-Canel, the provincial party apparatchik who rose to the presidency by repeating, and probably believing, Fidel Castro’s totalitarian mantra, “within the revolution everything, outside nothing”. When the president addressed the people for the second time on Sunday, he said: “Our streets are for revolutionaries.” The message is that they are not for anybody else.
Yet he seemed strangely blind to what had just happened. On a scale not seen since the 1959 revolution which brought Castro to power, thousands of people overcame their fear and openly expressed their desire for change.
There was looting of shops in Havana and attacks on police cars — acts that would normally lead to years of imprisonment for the perpetrators. There are probably too many of them to jail.
Mobile internet has been available to Cubans since 2019 so the whole spectacle was recorded on phones and shared across the island.
Millions of Cubans who have never seen any significant protest in their lifetimes saw one unrolling live before them. They now know what is possible.
