Another university student warns, in the face of the advance of dollarization, that the country “also belongs to those of us who don’t have dollars.”
14ymedio, Havana, 13 June 2025 — “I don’t want any more DTI [Department of Technical Investigations] people in my house,” a young medical student blurts out in front of her professors and classmates, with the anger that only comes from being fed up. The scene, captured on video and viral on social media in recent hours, has put a face, name, and anguish to the latest chapter of university repression in Cuba.
Anisleydis Reyes, a student at the University of Medical Sciences of Las Tunas, is no longer afraid to speak out, even though she could lose everything. Her crime: speaking out against the ‘tarifazo‘ — the rate hike recently imposed by Etecsa, the State telecommunications company. The future doctor reports that the political police have visited her home and she holds State Security responsible for any health problems her mother may suffer due to these coercive strategies.
“It would be a shame if you study for six years only to end up not getting your degree,” Reyes was told.
Since data package prices skyrocketed on May 30, classrooms have become trenches. Students protested however they could: they denounced the subservience of their representatives holding positions in the student control apparatus, stopped attending classes, and posted statements on social media. What followed was a well-worn State Security manual: warnings, interrogations, manipulations, veiled (or not so veiled) threats. “It would be a shame if you study for six years only to end up not getting your degree,” they told Reyes, while accusing her of being a ringleader, an instigator, and a counterrevolutionary.
But Reyes’s social media profile isn’t that of an activist, much less an opponent. She’s a teenager, like many others, who shares photos of herself on the beach or with friends, who enjoys reading The Little Prince, and who follows famous soccer players. If these protests have made any difference, it’s that discontent and open confrontation with power are no longer a rarity or an exception; they’re a widespread sentiment among young people.
In the videos that circulate, another student can be heard saying, “This country also belongs to those of us who don’t have dollars.” Another young woman questions, “If our government violates its own laws, how can they claim we violate them?”
The pressures were not selective. Raymar Aguado Hernández, one of the activists who openly supported the protests from Havana, received an unwelcome visitor at his home. They went to find him, put him in a patrol car, and took him to the Zanja y Dragones station. The initial interrogation was tepid, almost bureaucratic. Then came the confinement in a windowless room and a direct threat, whispering the name of the State Security prison of choice: “Villa Marista is waiting for you.” He didn’t sign the form. They took his documents. And they warned him that, without them, going out onto the street could result in arrest.
Aguado, 24, knows all too well what that means. In 2022, he dropped out of his psychology program after being constantly harassed by the political police. He was told he would never set foot in an official classroom in Cuba again. Today, he studies humanities at the Félix Varela Center, publishes essays, organizes cultural activities, and navigates the ever-narrower space of activism on the island. And although he has gained experience, he has never lost the vulnerability that comes with having those in power throwing their weight around.
The modus operandi is now familiar: nighttime visits, “informal” conversations with deans, threats about academic futures, interrogations that begin as dialogue and end as sentences. In the university hallways, there is fear, but also dignity. Outrage over Etecsa’s rate hike was the spark, but the fuel comes from before: insufficient scholarships, poor-quality food, constant power outages, hearing parents urging them to “speak quietly,” and a sense of unstoppable general deterioration across the country.
Their complaints are not only against the ’tarifazo’
The faces of Aguado and Reyes, on the other hand, have managed to break through the wall of silence. Their protests aren’t just against the rate hike. They’re against a system that turns students into enemies, that responds to protests with surveillance, that reduces the university to a field of political loyalty.
On social media, the video has sparked both solidarity and fury. Many recall that this is not the first time a student protest has ended in closed files, expulsions, or forced exile. In 2021, David Martínez Espinosa was expelled as a professor at the Cienfuegos University of Medical Sciences for posting on digital platforms “questioning the Cuban social process” and demonstrating “with open defiance and criticism” of the political system.
But what’s new about this moment is the synchronicity. The protests against the tarifazo weren’t an isolated outbreak, but a movement that spread spontaneously throughout all regions of the country. And although the government managed to put out the fire with the old method of intimidation, something remained. A crack. A message. A switched-on phone that they couldn’t detect.
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