According to the priest, the situation has become desperate on the island.
“It’s desperate because we’re caught between the lack of electricity and food. That is to say, what little there is to eat can’t be cooked. This totally immobilizes you, because you can’t do anything. People are at a point of desperation and can’t take it anymore,” he said.
The country’s president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, wrote on X March 17 that “various people have expressed their unhappiness with the electricity service and the distribution of food” and claimed that “the enemies of the Revolution are trying to take advantage of this context for destabilizing purposes.”
However, Gallardo criticized Díaz-Canel’s explanation, pointing out that it “no longer has any validity” and “no one in Cuba believes it.”
According to Reyes, the “split between the government and the people” is increasingly noticeable.
“It’s as if the government is not interested in the people. The government is the big missing factor in all this. One official or another comes out trying to calm things down, but here there’s no one saying ‘let’s see, this is the situation, let’s do something.’ People are totally fed up,” he explained.
According to Gallardo, although the government has not denied the problems, it hasn’t explained their origin or their real dimension.
“They assure that it’s a problem that they’re trying to solve, that the [U.S.] embargo is to blame, and that what meets the minimum requirement and is essential is being distributed, but that’s not true,” he said.
For the Cuban layman and for Reyes, conditions are ripe for major street protests to occur, similar to those that took place in July 2021.
“The climate is tense and the situation is ripe for these uprisings. The problem is that the repression is so fierce that, when night falls, they begin to crack down immediately, cutting off the internet and snuffing out the protest,” Gallardo explained.
Reyes commented that everything depends on “the spark multiplying and becoming widespread.”
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“It could happen at any time,” he said.
This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.
Diego Lopez Marina has a degree in Communication Sciences with a specialization in journalism from the University of San Martín de Porres (Peru). He began his professional career in 2015, as an editor for the Journalistic Archive area of the Diario El Comercio. In 2016 he began working as an writer for ACI Prensa and since 2018 he has been working as a web editor.