What the Protests in Cuba Mean for the Future of Communism and U.S. Relations

COVID-19 has created an economic crisis in Cuba. In recent days, thousands of angry people have taken to the streets in cities across the island to protest shortages of food, medicine, and energy—and the Cuban government’s pandemic response. These are Cuba’s most significant demonstrations in decades. Cuba’s president, Miguel Diaz-Canel has blamed a U.S. “policy of economic suffocation” for the hardships Cubans face and claimed the demonstrators are mercenaries hired by the U.S. to destabilize the island.

Away from TV cameras, his government has responded to the unrest mainly by throwing protesters in jail and switching off the internet. Soldiers and police will try to use just enough force to keep crowds under control, to avoid the brutality and bloodshed that might poison economically critical relationships with the E.U. and Canada, but protesters know that if push comes to shove, violence is always possible. Some have reportedly already been beaten and hit with paper spray.

These tactics will probably contain this round of demonstrations, at least for now, but that’s not a solution for Diaz-Canel. The economic hardships the pandemic has imposed across the island and on Cuba’s most reliable allies, Venezuela and Russia, leave Diaz-Canel without good options to solve the problems that are making people so angry. The government has also shut down tourism onto the island, a critical source of income for people and of both state revenue and hard currency. Tourists won’t be in a hurry to return even after barriers are lifted.

The backdrop

Whatever he says publicly to reassure the party’s old guard that his watchword remains “continuity,” Diaz-Canel’s actions suggest he understands the need to gradually liberalize Cuba’s economy. International benefactors can’t be relied indefinitely, given Venezuela’s slow-motion economic meltdown and Russia’s lack of interest, and a siege economy can’t be maintained indefinitely without outside help.

That’s why, for example, the Cuban government finally eliminated the island’s dual-currency system earlier this year. In 1994, following the economic chaos released in Cuba by the collapse of the Soviet Union, Cuba introduced the so-called convertible peso (CUC) alongside its regular peso. The CUC, pegged to the dollar at one to one, was designed to help Cuba manage the loss of Soviet subsidies with a tool that could bring in dollars. But there are many reasons why a system that includes two currencies with entirely different values eventually creates economic turmoil; the most important is that it creates and sustains a dynamic black market that leaves government with little means to track activity and collect the revenue needed to provide basic goods and services, essential to the survival of an economy run by the state. He has also taken small steps toward reducing subsidies for state-run enterprises and allowing the private sector to expand. This week, the Cuban lifted a tax on imported food and medicine. But structural reforms come with short-term pain, and Cubans are in no mood for more suffering.

Diaz-Canel also understands the importance of the internet for Cuba and its economy, whatever emergency measures he might take in times of protest. He has long argued for broader (and more affordable) internet access for Cuba’s people, and he’s been a regular presence on Twitter. But greater internet access and the introduction of social media for more Cubans has provided ordinary people not only with the means to share their frustrations with others across the island but to organize dissent and coordinate protest. This week, social media posts which livestreamed images of rioters overturning police cars and looting state-owned shops led to internet shutdowns.

Generational change

There is one traditional crowd-control strategy that has become much harder to use: the invocation of Fidel Castro and the revolutionary struggle. President Miguel Diaz-Canel has only been Cuba’s undisputed leader since the retirement of Fidel’s brother Raul Castro as party chief three months ago. The name Castro still carries plenty of weight within the party and the army, but Raul is now 90 years old, and the new politburo is composed almost entirely of a younger generation of leaders who can’t match Fidel’s political charisma. Diaz-Canel was trained not as a guerrilla but as an electronic engineer.

As importantly, there are now few Cubans old enough to remember the 1959 revolution. (Diaz-Canel was born in 1960.) Most Cubans remember Fidel as a feisty old man. It’s much harder to persuade an angry citizen standing in a long line for food that may be gone before he reaches the front of the line that the Castro cause is worth the sacrifice. Especially when standing in line adds to the risk of catching and spreading COVID-19. The Cuban government’s official line that protesters are paid American agents isn’t going to persuade anyone that their government cares how they feel.

The U.S. angle

What about the giant neighbor to the north? After Donald Trump imposed tighter economic and political restrictions on Cuba, Biden promised a return to tentative engagement with Cuba and its government. He campaigned for president on pledges to return to Obama-era plans to make it easier for people to travel to and from the island and to send money to relatives there. He spoke of liberalizing travel and reestablishing diplomatic relations between the two countries. Back in March, 80 House Democrats signed a letter urging Biden to keep his Cuba promises.

The protests have effectively ended those plans. On July 12, Biden called on Cuba’s government to listen to the protesters and to take their expressions seriously. But Biden doesn’t want to appear to be throwing Cuba’s Communists a lifeline at a time when they’re facing the biggest demonstrations in decades. As long as protests continue, he won’t even have to take first steps in the Cuban regime’s direction by, for example, removing Cuba from the list of state sponsors of terrorism. What’s more, both Democrats in Florida and Donald Trump are happy to remind Biden how easy it is to paint Democrats as dangerous socialists in a state that remains central to the fight for both the White House and control of Congress.

What to watch

Cuba is a subject which American media tends to report through a U.S. political lens. That’s understandable, given the number of Cuban exiles, and their families, living in the US. But for a broader perspective, it’s often helpful for Americans in particular to look at coverage of Cuba from an international source. This overview from Al Jazeera is useful.