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HAVANA — A year after the biggest protests in decades rocked Cuba’s one-party government, hundreds of people who took part are in jail and the economic and political factors that fueled the demonstrations largely remain.
Streets and public squares filled with protesters on July 11 and 12, 2021, some responding to calls on social media, others joining spontaneously to express frustration with shortages, long lines and a lack of political options.
Since then, a few things have changed: The Communist Party government has made its widest — if limited — opening to private enterprise in six decades, allowing small and medium-sized companies. And the easing of the COVID-19 pandemic has allowed a gradual revival of the critical tourism industry.
But overall, the economy remains tough, with long lines and rapidly rising prices for scarce goods. This fueled a huge increase in migration, mainly to the United States.
And the economy remains under pressure from American sanctions. Although US President Joe Biden has eased some, such as allowing US residents to send more money to Cuban relatives and processing some visas in Cuba, he has been slow to fulfill his campaign promises to lift many of the other restrictions imposed by former President Donald Trump. That commitment may have been further delayed by the Cuban government’s crackdown on the protests, which soured the atmosphere for any seeming concessions from Washington.
But the protests changed everything for the Roman family from Havana’s La Guinera neighborhood.
Three of the family members were arrested on June 12, 2021, and two remain in jail.
“They did not commit a crime so serious as to warrant this punishment,” said Emilio Roman, 51, whose 26-year-old son Josni, a construction worker, and 24-year-old daughter Makianis, a homemaker, were sentenced to 10 years in prison on charges of rebellion in March. His youngest daughter, 18-year-old Emioslan, was released on parole because she was a minor when she was arrested.
Three cousins were also arrested – two of them are also in prison for 10 years.
Officials did not say how many people were arrested during the protests, which took place in dozens of locations across the country, but an independent organization set up to track the cases, Justice 11J, counted more than 1,400.
The National Prosecutor’s Office reported in June that courts had handed down 488 sentences to protesters ranging from up to 25 years in prison.
“The government is demonstrating its authoritarian nature,” said Giselle Morphy, a Cuban lawyer now based in Mexico and working with Cubalex, a legal aid group focused on human rights in Cuba. “The state criminalizes the exercise of fundamental rights that should be protected in any democratic society, such as freedom of expression, and stigmatizes protest.”
She said the crackdown was intended to dissuade Cubans from any new wave of protests.
Playwright Yunior García, who called for more demonstrations – unsuccessfully – last November, has left the country.
Authorities insist those arrested are not political prisoners but people who have broken laws against public order, vandalism or rioting, often at the instigation of US-based opposition groups using social media to attack the socialist state.
After a massive vaccination campaign with vaccines developed in Cuba itself, authorities say they have seen no deaths from COVID-19 in more than a month. Hotels and air routes that have been closed for more than a year are reopening, a major milestone for a country that depends heavily on foreign tourism for the hard currency needed to import food and other essential goods.
Cuba recorded just 573,000 foreign visitors last year, down from 4.2 million in 2019.
But long queues for fuel and food remain and power outages are common after the pandemic-induced economic decline of 11% in 2020 and a weak recovery of 2% in 2021.
“These Cuban officials refuse to accept the three simplest economic keys to the crisis: breakfast, lunch and dinner,” said Domingo Amuchastegui, a former Cuban diplomat. He argues that opening up to small private businesses is still too limited.
“The great lesson of China and Vietnam is being ignored,” he said, referring to the communist-led nations that opened much more widely to private enterprise.
However, Cuba’s Ministry of Economy announced in mid-June that 3,980 small and medium-sized private enterprises had been approved since September, creating 66,300 jobs.
The once-mighty sugar industry managed to produce only 480,000 metric tons last harvest, just over half of planned output and insufficient to meet foreign contracts.
But perhaps the hardest hit for most Cubans is the inflation that followed the removal of the country’s old dual-currency system — a long-debated reform that finally arrived in the midst of other crises.
While the newly unified peso is officially trading at 24 to the dollar, street prices are running at 100 to 1.
One of the most visible consequences of the economic crisis – and to a lesser extent of the repression – is the sharp increase in emigration.
The U.S. Customs and Border Patrol recorded an encounter with about 140,000 Cubans at U.S. land borders from the beginning of the fiscal year in October through May, a figure that surpassed even the dramatic Mariel exodus of 1980, when 125,000 Cubans reached the U.S.
The U.S. Coast Guard reported apprehending 2,464 Cuban migrants at sea, also a jump from recent years.
“There are fewer and fewer young people willing to live in the country,” said Cuban-born lawyer and political analyst Luis Carlos Batista, who said the loss was economically damaging for a small nation with an aging population trying to cope with economic US sanctions issues.
“It could easily be that 1.5 percent of the Cuban population left in just 10 months,” he said.
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