Article authors:
Reuters
Dave Sherwood and Marc Frank
Havana — On July 11, last year, Cuba appeared ready for political change.
The biggest protests since the late Fidel Castro came to power in 1959 shook the Communist-run islands when Cubans poured in as they demanded social and economic reforms. ..
However, the rally was short-lived. Cuban officials have since sentenced hundreds of people to imprisonment on charges ranging from public turmoil to sedition and urged activists to claim infringement. Other dissidents fled the island after seeing pressure to slow down.
Since October, more than 140,000 Cubans from all disciplines have left for the United States. According to US government statistics, it is the biggest escape from Cuba in decades.
Coupled with a more general crackdown on objections, the migration has left the legacy and future of one of the most daring protests since the beginning of the Cuban Revolution, analysts say.
"Most complaints have to leave the country," said Belthoffmann, a Latin American expert at the German Global and Area Institute. "To be sustainable over the long term, (the movement) needs to be organized."
A year later, Cuban asylum seekers and supporters abroad gather to mark the date. However, there are few signs of a systematic protest plan on the island itself.
In a public statement and in an interview with Reuters, more than 12 dissident leaders said it was because Cuban authorities left unspeakable choices for them. increase. Or go to jail.
"It was an impossible decision," said Carolina Valero of Cuba in an interview from Santiago, Chile. She is a member of the San Isidro movement in Cuba, a group of artist activists who preceded the protests in July 2021.
Valero, also a Spanish citizen, said authorities had given him 48 hours to leave Cuba earlier this year, calling it part of the "witch hunt" after the rally.
Nevertheless, the protest left a mark, she said.
"They managed to inspire and break the barrier," Valero said. "(The Cuban government) is completely aware that tensions still remain, and that any small protest can explode."
Cuba The July 11 protests have been instigated by the United States, stating that they are trying to overthrow the government with stricter economic sanctions. The United States states that the protests are voluntary and deny that it caused them.
Cuban authorities did not respond to requests for comment on this story.
"Protests staying here"
Last year's protests have declined, but the economic crisis that catalyzes them has not. A long line of food, public transport, fuel and medicine caused frustration. Energy outages occur frequently.
President Miguel Diaz Cannell paid attention. He ordered the government to respond more quickly and recently launched a program to improve infrastructure and rehabilitate more than 1,000 poor areas in the country.
Some protest leaders dream of a comeback, many abroad. U.S.-based Cuban political expert Arturo Lopez Levi, however, said he needed to regain contact with the economy, the real source of anger among Cubans.
"In the proceedings, the opposition is becoming more and more separated," he said.
Ramos, another leader of the San Isidro movement, now outside Cuba, said global attention meant "the movement expanded in ways we could not control." rice field.
"This made it more powerful, but more vulnerable," she said.
Ramos said the group leader was repeatedly detained and cross-examined, and she also felt pressure to leave. According to a Cuban Interior Ministry document read by Reuters, she tried a two-return country, but she was denied entry because she was "unacceptable" without explanation.
San Isidro is now trying to rethink herself off the island, she says, and she believes she has an activist role both inside and outside the country. She added.
Cuban state media has called San Isidro as part of a US-led "soft coup" attempt, accusing the group of denying it.
Long-time democratic activist Manuel Questa Morua, a rare organizer who still lives on the island, said he was feeling more and more lonely.
Another July 11th looks unlikely, but he said he was optimistic that there would be "many mini July 11th".
"I believe the protests are here to stay in Cuban society," he said. (Report by Dave Sherwood and Mark Frank, additional report by Annette Rios and Nelson Acosta in Havana, Rodrigo Gutierrez in Santiago, edited by Rosalva O'Brien)
