Cuban Protests J11 (7/11/23)

U.S. Blames Cuba for Failure of U.S.-Cuba Reconciliation

On December 16. 2024, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Brian Nichols made a statement about the U.S.-Cuba relationship to the editors of Marti Noticias, a Cuba organization founded in 1983 “to serve as a reliable and authoritative source of accurate, balanced and complete information for the Cuban people,” which is “a closed society where all media outlets continue to be controlled by the State, [while] Radio Martí and Martinoticias.com focus on essentially covering the Cuban issue with an alternative vision that breaks censorship.”[1]

Nichols said, ““The restoration of diplomatic relations under the Obama administration was an important step in trying to improve the lives of Cuban citizens and address challenges such as the lack of democracy on the island. However, the reforms we would have liked to see in Cuba did not occur.”

“Relations quickly cooled after Donald Trump came to power in his first term, mysterious health incidents involving US diplomats in Havana and then the brutal repression of peaceful protests by hundreds of thousands of Cubans demanding freedom.”

“In 2021 we saw a wave of repression that truly stunned the world, a huge setback for the well-being of the Cuban people and the international community. It was a missed opportunity by the Cuban regime,” Nichols added.

“Since mass protests in July 2021, the Cuban regime has imprisoned more than 1,000 political prisoners, many of them young people who took to the streets to peacefully demand fundamental freedoms. The sentences imposed amount to decades of imprisonment. Despite repeated calls from the United States for their release, Havana has ignored these demands.”

“’Our focus in Cuba is to promote private sector development and address some of the humanitarian challenges, such as the lack of economic resources and food,’ said Nichols.”

“’There is hunger, maybe not a famine, but a lot of hunger in Cuba. The economic activity of the private sector supports the well-being of ordinary people, and we have tried to support this with changes in economic regulations.’”

“In May 2024, the Joe Biden administration implemented measures to strengthen the private sector on the island, allowing Cuban entrepreneurs to open bank accounts in the United States and carry out international transactions. Cloud services were also authorized to improve Internet access and financial options were expanded to benefit the population.”

“However, the Cuban regime has hindered this development. It has restricted wholesale trade for private actors, limiting it exclusively to contracts with state entities. In addition, it eliminated incentives for new businesses, imposed higher requirements for entrepreneurship, increased taxes and tightened accounting regulations, further hampering private sector growth.”

“’’The solution to the problems Cuba faces at this time is democracy and increased freedoms,’ Nichols stressed, arguing that greater openness would allow for ‘more economic growth’ and general well-being for the population.”

“’You cannot treat the symptoms, such as the blackouts, without addressing the real disease: the lack of democracy in Cuba,’ Nichols concluded.

Reactions

There is a lot of truth in these remarks by Deputy Secretary Nichols. However, it misleadingly omits referring to U.S. actions that have contributed to the current unpleasant state of the relationship: maintenance of the U.S. embargo of the island and the U.S. designation of Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism.

Note shold also be made about this blog’s posts about President Obama’s leadership in fostering a normalization of this bilateral relationship and the first Trump administration’s abandonment of these Obama efforts and the failure of the Biden Administration to return to the Obama normalization campaign.

================================

[1] Ten years after the ‘thaw’ with Havana, the U.S. says it was a ;missed opportunity,’ Diario de Cuba (Dec. 17. 2024); Penton, “A missed opportunity,’ says the US a decade after the thaw with Cuba, Marti Noricias (Dec. 16, 2024); Get to know us, Marti Noticias. See also Why Are Cuba and the U.S. Still Mired in the Cold War?, dwkcommentaries.com (Dec. 16, 2024).

Noted Critic of Cuba Lambasts EU Aid to Cuba

The Wall Street Journal’s columnist, Mary Anastasia O’Grady, has penned a severe criticism of the European Union’s financial aid to the island. This July, for example, the EU “sent E500,000 to Cuba, ostensibly for ‘public health’” and its “Multiannual Indicative Programme (MIP) for Cuba for 2021-2024 amounts to €91 million.”[1]

“Anna Fotyga, a former Polish minister of foreign affairs and a former member of the European Parliament, wrote in the European Conservative last week that it’s ‘estimated that the EU is currently funding 80 projects in Cuba at a cost of nearly 155 million euros. Every single one of these projects is run by organizations with close ties to the Raul Castro regime.’”

In short,”there is no such thing as an independent nongovernmental organization that receives money from abroad in Cuba. . . . Sending money to Cuba is sending money to the regime.”

Moreover, “European aid . . . also goes against European interests because Havana is helping Russia in its effort to take Ukraine.”

“[B]ankrupt Havana is desperate for hard currency. First because its economy doesn’t grow. Second because it needs to maintain its repressive police state, at home and in Venezuela where the Cuban agents have infiltrated the military.”

“J11 (the day of mass arrests of Cuban protesters) “revealed the raw brutality the regime uses to keep the lid on popular discontent. Condemnation came from all quarters. Hollywood apologists went silent.”

“Dissident leader Daniel Ferrer is in a prison on the other end of the island. The website Ciber Cuba reported on Aug. 22 that the 56-year-old ‘is in a sealed cell, where hardly any air circulates’ and there is no daylight. He ‘perceives a constant noise within the cell’ and suffers “severe headaches, ringing in the ears, bleeding in the mouth, loss of vision, cramps, and momentary paralysis in his hands.”

===========================

[1] O’Grady, The EU Funds Havana—and Helps Moscow, W.S.J. (Sept. 1, 2024); O’Grady’s bio.

More Cuban Comments on J11 Anniversary

Michel Suarez, a journalist for Los Puntos a Las ies, offered the following comments on the third anniversary of J11.[1]

“Three years after the historic protests of July 11 and 12, 2021 in Cuba , the living conditions of imprisoned protesters have worsened, in a scenario of blackouts, lack of food and more repression , activists and journalists denounced in the program Los Puntos a las Íes , from DIARIO DE CUBA.”

“There are more complaints about mistreatment and retaliation for having denounced the conditions in prison, and the State has not undertaken any procedure to review the processes and violations of guarantees that occurred during the trials and the subsequent sanction,” said Laritza Diversent, executive director of Cubalex.”

“Javier Larrondo, president of Prisoners Defenders, noted that between July 2021 and June 2024, his organization counted 2,331 political prisoners in Cuba, with 1,573 new additions to the list during the three years.”

“’Over the past 12 months, the trend has continued with more than 15 new people being imprisoned each month , so the list continues to grow and repression is increasing in Cuba without any apparent restraint.’ the activist denounced.’

“Journalist Waldo Fernández Cuenca described the current situation as ‘very complicated, because there is still a lot of repression.’ He recalled that ‘many relatives do not want to talk to the press, because they are still afraid and do not want to report.’”

“Cubalex announced the upcoming publication of a study on retaliation against prisoners and their families for reporting abuses from prison . ‘There is a significant increase compared to 2022,’ Diversent said.”

“For Fernández Cuenca, the international reaction has been ‘forceful, especially from democratic countries,’ but Diversent considered that ‘there is still much to do, because the international community still does not have enough information to provide such solidarity.’”

“Assessing the provisional repressive data for the first half of 2024, offered by the Cuban Observatory of Human Rights – 1,792 repressive actions, of which 432 were arbitrary arrests – Waldo Fernández considered that ‘the conditions are in place for another social outbreak’.”

“’This has always been there after July 11, and it has been seen with protests in Nuevitas, Santiago de Cuba, Bayamo, Matanzas, Caimanera… And now, if the blackouts and chronic shortages continue, there will be new protests.’ warned the journalist.”

“At the end of the program, [Laritza] Diversent said that in Cuba ‘we are facing a humanitarian crisis’ due to the State’s demonstrated inability to resolve the basic problems of the population.”

“’People will go out to seek sustenance and demand that the government resolve their situation. If they cannot do so through official channels, protest is the only remedy left to them,’ said the director of Cubalex.”

Other Comments

Several Cuban and international civil society organizations said that “more than 650 Cubans remain in prison for [the J11 protests]. And this April “the Cuban regime threatened “to apply severe sanctions, including the death penalty” to people who promoted or participated in demonstrations.[2]

Juan Antonio Blanco says that “this great national rebellion “showed that the majority of the [Cuban] population rejected a failed and repressive regime. The idea that the people lived happily in that society was a fabricated fallacy exported to the world. . . . The great lesson that was reiterated on July 11 is that nothing is achieved from a dictatorship without confronting it. . . J11 brought about—finally—the long-delayed approval of MSMEs . . . [and] led the government to consider that by facilitating a mass exodus to the US it would get rid of all the rioters and even reap financial benefits.” . . . [Yet] the regime has not metabolized the essence of the new phenomenon that it is facing” and [all] the country’s laws have been strengthened to penalize the slightest expression of opposition, but also of dissent. . . . To gain governability, the only thing that could be done is to change the governance regime, the system of government that has ruled until today and that remains basically totalitarian.” [3]

Emilio Morales says Cuba “has been in a state of war economy for more than six decades; it is not something that suddenly emerged at the last minute. The war economy is the very essence of the system, it is its genetic basis, it is the matrix of control that dictator Fidel Castro implemented since the triumph of the revolution in 1959 and that has lasted from then until today. It was the most effective way to achieve citizen control. Very simple: it was necessary to eliminate all sources of wealth creation in the hands of citizens, take control of them in their entirety and find someone to blame for the economic debacle that would follow.”[4]

Now, according to Morales, “the Cuban economy is a disaster, its industries are in ruins, its banks are bankrupt, the state enterprise is totally decapitalized, foreign investment is scarce . . . more than 80% of the population lives in poverty, the country practically does not export because it does not produce. The productive forces are gagged by the system, by a legal system that does not allow free enterprise and limits the generation of wealth by citizens. Today the country depends on imports of products and raw materials, but does not have the financing to maintain them, because it has lost its lines of credit for not paying its external debt with creditors. This, added to the debacle of agricultural production has led to a deep shortage of products that has generated the worst inflationary crisis in the history of the country.”

Morales concludes, “The only way to stop the inflationary explosion and all the ills that plague the country’s economy is to get out of this parasitic and hegemonic system under which the Castro family has been exploiting Cubans and stealing the country’s wealth for 65 years.”

========================

[1] Suarez, Third anniversary of 11J: ‘The only remedy in Cuba is protest,’ Diario de Cuba (July 9, 2024).

[2] More than 650 Cubans remain in prison for the 11 J protests, three years later, Diario de Cuba (July 12, 2024).

[3] Blanco, Cuba, three years after 11J, Diario de Cuba ( July 11, 2024)

[4] Morales, ‘War economy’: the Cuban regime’s psychological torture mechanism, Diario de Cuba (July 12, 2024).