For the first time in over 60 years, thousands of Cubans, in more than 20 towns and cities across the island, took to the streets to shout “freedom” and “down with the dictatorship”.
President Miguel Díaz-Canel went on live national television to call for his followers to take to the streets to “confront” the demonstrators, who he labeled ‘mercenaries’.
“The order to fight has been given; revolutionaries to the streets!” he said. Diaz-Canel has blamed Cuba’s current crisis on the usual enemy: the US. The decades-old US trade embargo on Cuba was tightened by the Trump administration, leading to acute shortages of food and medicine. The Biden administration has yet to revise US policy on Havana.
