Cuban students, particularly those in high school and university, are fed up with the restrictions and violations of their citizenship rights by totalitarianism.
14ymedio, Pedro Corzo, Miami, 22 June 2024 — Recent student protests in Cuba raise hopes for a return to the days when this transient sector of Cuban society was a constant and just demander of its rights.
Cuban students, particularly those in high school and university, are fed up with the restrictions and violations of their citizenship rights imposed by totalitarian regimes. The rise in the price of telephone services provided by the state through one of its entities, the Cuban Telecommunications Company (ETECSA), has fueled frustration and a lack of hope for a better life for the entire population, particularly young people, with steep price hikes for internet and phone services, the so-called ‘tarifazo.’
According to an article published by El Nuevo Herald, the State’s communications monopoly Etecsa is at least partially owned by Cuban military companies, the true owners of the island.
According to an article published by El Nuevo Herald, the State’s communications monopoly Etecsa is at least partially owned by Cuban military companies, the true owners of the island.
These uniformed thugs have earned millions of dollars selling telephone services to Cubans living abroad for their relatives living in Cuba. Furthermore, columnist Nora Gámez states, “secret financial documents obtained by the Miami Herald show that Rafin SA, a military-controlled company with a significant stake in Etecsa, had $407 million in cash in August of last year.”
The inefficiency and greed of the Cuban totalitarian system are equal. Its officials refuse to engage in profitable productive activities, but they adore the means that allow them and their offspring to enjoy a better life, as evidenced by the fact that Manuel Anido Cuesta, a law graduate from the University of Havana who is Miguel Díaz-Canel’s stepson with Cuba’s titled First Lady, Lis Cuesta, is enrolled in the National Taxation Program for Professionals at IE University Business School in Madrid.
The sum accumulated by these Etecsa partners is so significant that it is impossible for Díaz-Canel to have spent it enrolling his wife’s son at the Madrid university or the children of other women at various higher education centers, while ordinary students on the island cannot access the services of the Island’s only existing cell phone service due to its high prices.
The protests by students and the rest of the population are very important. We don’t know how long they will last, but nevertheless they demonstrate the massive exhaustion of the population, which is most aptly reflected in the high number of political prisoners more than six and a half decades after the Castros came to power.
Cuba is an extremely dry prairie. For 66 years, government failure has accumulated the malignant residue of its errors, lies, failed plans, misery, and death, making it very possible that the humblest rebuke could unleash a chain of events that displaces the ruling class and paves the way for momentous changes.
The protests by students and the rest of the population are very important. We don’t know how long they will last, but they still show the massive exhaustion of the population.
Igniting the redeeming spark that will bring the island’s fields, destroyed by totalitarianism, is in the hands of Cubans themselves. There are plenty of examples in the land of our birth, such as on January 12, the eve of the assault on the city of Bayamo, Oriente, when a group led by Pedro Figueredo Perucho , author of the lyrics to “La Bayamesa,” decided to set fire to their homes.
Cuban students, especially university students, played a particularly vigilante role during the Republican era, and Fidel Castro was quick to neutralize them in the initial months after the triumph of the insurrection when he decided to take control of the University Student Federation, an entity that for decades yielded to the will of totalitarianism, as evidenced by the statement by the national president of that organization, Ricardo Rodríguez González, who accused “supposed enemies of manipulating the recent expressions of discontent in the country’s universities, following the tuition increase announced by the state university.”
Students, like the rest of the population, are forced to demand their rights. General Antonio Maceo said: “Freedom is conquered with the edge of the machete, it is not asked for; for begging for rights is typical of cowards incapable of exercising them.”
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