Yoani Sánchez: The young people who went out to march “are the ones who had nothing to lose because they had already lost everything”

(CNN Spanish) – The protests in Cubas called for November 15 have been described as historic by many, because for the first time in years, a protest organized in advance will take over the streets of Cuba. The reason? A general discontent with the government, in the midst of an intense economic crisis and a generation that wants to be heard.

CNN spoke with Cuban journalist Yoani Sánchez, director of the media outlet 14ymedio.com. From Havana, Sánchez spoke about what motivated the protests, the government’s reaction to the call and what he expects to happen on November 15.

CNN: In what context are the protests of 15N. What is the situation in Cuba for which these marches were called?

Yoani Sánchez: The current Cuban context is very complicated. The popular protests of July 11, and also the call for a civic march on November 15, are part of a moment that is probably the most acute, profound and hopeless crisis in the last quarter of a century in Cuba. I would even dare to say that this crisis in many details is worse than the one that broke out on the island after the fall of the Berlin Wall and after (the fall of the) subsidy sent by the Soviet Union. Why? It is even worse because this new crisis falls on a very injured population, on a population that many of the people that make it up suffered that euphemistically called “special period” (the crisis of the 90s), so there is a degree of injury much higher cumulative, too.

Therefore, these unprecedented social protests, in the Cuban history of the last half century, due to their magnitude, due to the number of cities, towns and places on the island that joined those of July 11, and also due to the shared feelings of the demonstrators of change, openness, the end of the current political-economic model, all this is in a context of a very complicated, very difficult scenario.

CNN: How does the economy affect Cubans and what does it have to do with social unrest?

Yoani Sánchez: From an economic point of view we are hitting rock bottom. Putting a plate of food on the table becomes a daily battle, the devaluation of the national currency, the lack of offers in the markets, the dysfunctionality or inefficiency of the system to generate services, wealth, comforts … All that is gone accumulating over the years and right now we are in a very gloomy scenario where most of the people spend the day in a queue to buy something to put in their mouth, while others do not even have the money to get the minimum.

In addition, it must be said that the political context, we are facing a turn of the screw of Castro’s authoritarianism. A reinforcement of the old rusty rhetoric of the Cold War, an attempt to monopolize in a single speech the plural and diverse voice of an entire country. Also with a repressive mood that does not even try to hide or put on makeup. It is absolutely open to penalize discrepancy, to penalize those who think differently and to send a message to the international community that there will be no democratic change in Cuba.

All this: the economic crisis, the despair of the population, the intensification of the ideological discourse, I believe that it has become a true social and political storm that is part of the scenario and the context of this protest that just started last summer. but they have already been installed in the minds of Cubans.

That July 11 was that moment in which we Cubans once again tasted the taste of our streets, the taste of demonstrating, the taste of shouting freedom. And when it occurs in a population it is irreversible.

CNN: What is the role of young people in this wave of demonstrations that have taken place in recent months? (The protests of November 2020, those of July 2021, and those of 15N). How can we understand the feeling they have to go out and protest?

Yoani Sánchez: Young Cubans were the majority in the streets on July 11, and also those who have suffered the repression unleashed by the regime after the protests.

Why? What led that generation that is less than 35 years old to protest if they had never before had the experience of behaving as citizens, as civic entities, as protesters in the streets of their country? They were driven by boredom, the suffocation they feel within their own island where they cannot fulfill their professional, personal, economic dreams.

They are young people who were born with dollarization and dual currency, saying goodbye to friends who left on a raft to cross the Straits of Florida … they are young people who do not vibrate and never vibrate under the music, the revolutionary epic of the 60s .

They are young people who, in addition to all the limitations, have been able, through new technologies, to feel more cosmopolitan and seek ways to find out about and learn about a world in parallel with the official media.

They are young people who often have no chance of becoming independent from their parents, or from their grandparents because they live under the same roof for several generations, and they know that this is probably not going to change the rest of their lives.

This is the group of young people who took to the streets. Those who had nothing to lose because they have lost everything.

CNN: How do you read the fact that the central government has not authorized the protests even though it is constitutionally a right?

Yoani Sánchez: Although the Cuban Constitution The current law enshrines the right to peaceful demonstration and the right that all citizens have to these public demonstrations of their disagreement, the truth is that that same constitution has several “corsets” or very well armored locks to avoid or use at convenience when they demand their right to demonstration.

What are those locks? One is Article 4 and 5. Article 5 establishes that the Communist Party is a kind of vanguard of society, a superpower even above the Constitution, the courts and the laws. As the Communist Party is that supra-entity, the red supremacy and the communist supremacism in Cuba, then it can decide which citizen can demonstrate and which cannot, what is the right to demonstrate that violates or does not violate its party precepts.

This article 5 is disastrous for the country and for the Cuban nationality, since it has been used, in this case, to deny the right to demonstration to the main activists and artists who have called for the civic march on November 15.

Also Article 4, which not only supports the issue of the ideology of the Communist Party, but also says that citizens can even defend with arms those who try to change the political-economic model.

Of course, this is an article that gives rise to violence, to attack the different, that in some way paramilitarizes the use of violence against people who have an opposite criterion or who move away from the Communist Party and the socialist model.

In some way it is an armored Constitution, made in the image and likeness of power in Cuba that does not admit the minimum opposition, or dissent, or the minimum plurality. So, beyond the other articles, the Cuban Constitution of 2019 was approved underlining these articles that shield and enthroned Castroism.

CNN: How do you read that the government of Cuba always puts the US behind protests, dissident dissidents, the demands made by the people, etc.? An answer copied from the Cold War …

Yoani Sánchez: The old stratagem of the Cuban regime of always blaming the United States or another power outside the national borders, for what happens in Cuba, therefore has many reasons.

In the first place, they seek to play a sweet symphony for the ears of those who want to believe that little David is facing the great Goliath, which is the United States. When in reality the equation is very different: little David is the people of Cuba, unarmed, without rights, watched, their freedom restricted and repressed, in front of the Great Goliath of a State, of a Communist Party and of a group in power. that has taken over the concept of nationality, the country’s resources, and also because it has the Army, it has the material resources and the shock troops to fight little David.

That is one of the reasons for always appealing to the worn out speech of the foreign enemy, especially the United States. But it must also be said that the victimization to which the Cuban regime always goes to point out that it is the victim of a universal conspiracy against them, is also given in order not to recognize its own mistakes, not to make self-criticism, not to do mea culpa.

In the 62 years that the Castros came to power, they never made a self-criticism or a mea culpa. The responsibility was never theirs. There was always a culprit who was alien: either the United States, or Europe, or Spain, or a hurricane, or a plague that wiped out citrus, but never its inefficiency, never its inability to provide a free life for Cubans. So they always appeal to that because, among other things, they want to destroy or try to destroy the figures, the projects, the groups, who want a democratic change in Cuba, on the basis that they are bought, organized or financed from outside.

That is to appeal to a cartoon nationalism that works less and less within Cuba, and especially that it works less and less within the young Cuban generations who feel more cosmopolitan, more universal and very, very far removed from these confrontations as old as now. those of the Cold War.

CNN: What is expected for November 15?

Yoani Sánchez: I believe that the Cuban regime is going to bring out all its repressive artillery. It will not skimp on filling the squares with its shock propaganda, its paramilitaries; It will also create its false recreational activities to cover up the violence and often confuse the images to the foreign press and the main organizers of the civic march will probably be arrested days before or on the same day.

Access to the internet and mobile telephony will be cut off, if not totally, as they did on July 12, 13 and 14, at least occasionally to activists, independent journalists, dissidents and organizers of the demonstration. There is also very likely a large wave of house arrests to prevent activists or people who wanted to participate in the demonstrations from leaving their homes.

So it is going to be a very difficult day, and the people are absolutely defenseless against this type of strategy, although there is also a lot of conviction.

If I am left with one word to define the spirit that people have, it is “conviction”: now or never.