The weather wasn’t the only thing that was hot in Cuba during August. Cubans took to the streets in protest during the month in much higher numbers than they did in the previous month or in August 2023. The independent human rights organization the Cuban Observatory of Conflicts documented a total of 691 protests throughout the island this past month.
The Cuban Observatory of Conflicts (OCC) documented 691 protests and public complaints in Cuba during August, highlighting a rise in social discontent and criticism of the regime’s failure to address the suffocating crisis impacting the nation. According to the report published by the OCC on Monday, the demonstrations in August represent a 24.61% increase compared to the 521 recorded in July and a 38.64% rise from the 424 that occurred in August 2023.
The report states that August was “a month in which the multilayered crisis affecting the majority of Cubans deepened, echoed in the streets and online with the sentiment that communist leaders do nothing because they ‘have everything’ and the people’s hardships ‘do not affect them.'” Over the first eight months of 2024, the OCC compiled expressions of dissatisfaction from all 15 provinces, except the special municipality of Isla de la Juventud. The highest number of protests occurred in Havana with 154, followed by Santiago de Cuba (61), Villa Clara (35), Holguín (30), and Guantánamo (30).
The majority of the discontent protests in the country—540 (78.14%)—were related to economic and social rights, evidencing widespread disapproval of Miguel Díaz-Canel’s government in critical sectors such as public health, services, public safety, food, social issues, and housing.
The ever-increasing number of protests in Cuba is sparked by a combination of discontent over the oppression and corruption of the Castro dictatorship and the desperation of the Cuban people who are losing their fear. The latter half of this combo is what the Cuban regime, which has used fear to subjugate the Cuban people for 65 years, is worried about the most.