Hundreds of Cuban protesters took to the streets on March 17, demanding food and electricity as the island faces daily power outages sometimes lasting more than 18 hours.
Social media posts show people chanting “electricity and food” during protests in Santiago. Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel has confirmed the protests and called for dialogue with the people.
“The disposition of the authorities of the Party, the State and the Government is to attend to the complaints of our people, listen, dialogue, explain the numerous efforts being made to improve the situation, always in an atmosphere of tranquility,” he added.
Mr. Díaz-Canel also warned that “the enemies of the Revolution” are seeking to exploit the situation “for destabilizing purposes.”
The Cuban leader blamed “terrorists based in the United States” for “encouraging actions that go against the internal order of the country.”
Earlier in the day, Beatriz Johnson Urrutia, secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba, showed up at the protests in Santiago to “have a dialogue with the people and hear their complaints,” local media reported.
Police were also present, but no arrests or violence were reported.
The U.S. Embassy in Havana said it was aware of reports of “peaceful protests” in Santiago, Bayamo, Granma, and other parts of Cuba.
Cuba has fallen into a near-unprecedented economic crisis since the COVID-19 pandemic, with vast shortages of food, fuel, and medicine stoking a record-breaking exodus that has seen upward of 400,000 people migrate to the United States.
Cuban-born Rep. Carlos Giménez (R-Fla.) urged the Biden administration to provide the island with satellite internet “to stop the repression of the dictatorial regime.”
Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava pledged to “unequivocally stand” with the people of Cuba in their quest for freedom.
Protests on the island are exceedingly rare but have occurred more often in recent years as the economic crisis has rocked the country.
Although Cuba’s 2019 constitution grants citizens the right to protest, a law more specifically defining that right has stalled in the legislature, leaving those who take to the street in legal limbo.
Rights groups, the European Union, and the United States criticized Cuba’s response to anti-government protests more than two years earlier, on July 11, 2021—the largest protests since Fidel Castro’s 1959 revolution—as heavy-handed and repressive.
