Cuban leader denies there were anti-government protests in Santiago on new YouTube show

After hundreds of Cubans recently took to the streets earlier this month calling for food, electricity and freedom, Cuban leader Miguel Díaz-Canel denied they were protesting against his government, again blaming the United States during a new YouTube show he says he will be hosting regularly because people need better “communication.”

The online show, “From the Presidency,” is the latest in a genre adopted by populist and authoritarian leaders worldwide who claim to be best suited to communicate directly with the public. But Díaz-Canel lacks the charisma of the late Fidel Castro, and his effort to spin a positive narrative on the recent protests exposes the limits of an old-fashioned propaganda system in the era of social media.

The show is similar to one late Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez hosted named “Aló Presidente” — dreaded by many Venezuelans because it dragged on for hours — though the Cuban version is shorter and the title less catchy. The Cuban version’s first episode, released Friday, followed a similar script of government propaganda and attacks on opponents, centered around the government’s determination to pin the protests in Santiago de Cuba and a few other cities on U.S. sanctions.

“As long as there is a blockade and as long as Cuba is included in a list of countries that supposedly support terrorism, we have all the sovereign right to blame the United States government,” Díaz-Canel said.

In another sign of the escalation of tensions in the relationship with the U.S., Cuba’s Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs, Carlos Fernández de Cossío, who frequently meets with his American counterparts as the top diplomat working on U.S. affairs, called the U.S. embassy in Havana “a sewer” in a post on X.

The renewed tensions revolve around the protests that erupted in Santiago de Cuba and Bayamo, two cities in eastern Cuba, and Santa Marta, near the sea resort of Varadero, on March 17, amid widespread shortages of food, medicines and oil.

The island’s economy never fully recovered from the end of subsidies after the collapse of the Soviet Union. After the country plunged into a severe economic crisis known as the Special Period, some market reforms and new subsidies from Chavez’s Venezuela kept the economy afloat. However, mismanagement and botched policies have ruined the island’s agriculture, and hardliners in government have blocked further market reforms to expand an emergent private sector. The COVID pandemic and U.S. financial sanctions have further limited the government’s access to foreign currency through remittances and tourism.

But economists agree Cuba’s problem is simple: the centrally planned Marxist economy does not work.

Díaz-Canel, the appointed president and head of the Communist Party who ordered a crackdown on islandwide protests in July 2021, struggled to control the narrative of the March demonstrations during the one-hour 11-minute show, at times acknowledging they were expressions of popular discontent, at others calling the protests “an exercise in socialist democracy” — and then denying there were protests at all.

He said that the people who took to the streets were “upset” due to lengthy blackouts, food shortages and problems in the distribution of food rations. But that didn’t amount to anti-government protests, he contended. Instead, he said they were merely seeking a government answer to their complaints. And authorities promptly responded by showing up and explaining “the circumstance that we all know and that has to do above all with the worsening of the blockade in the last four years.”

“The big news was the massive protests against Díaz-Canel’s government, and people were not protesting against the government; the people, our people, were raising difficult situations that they are experiencing,” he continued. “But to whom were they bringing them up? The government that protects our people, that works with our people to find solutions amid the most difficult circumstances.”

Verified videos of the protests show the demonstrators had direct political demands too, at times shouting “Freedom,” “‘Patria y Vida” (Homeland and Life) and expletives at Díaz-Canel. Residents of Bayamo walked through the city streets in darkness amid a blackout, singing the national anthem, a gesture carrying a strong symbolism as the town is believed to have been the place where independence fighter Perucho Figueredo wrote its lyrics and music in the late 1860s.

Díaz-Canel said the events were magnified by the international media, activists and influencers based in the United States and U.S. members of Congress who carry “hate for the Revolution.” In a vague accusation, he said some videos were manipulated with artificial intelligence to make the demonstrations appear of “greater magnitude.”

But in official meetings, Díaz-Canel acknowledged his government must urgently deliver if it wants to avoid similar protests. In a short clip shown on state television of a meeting with Economy Ministry officials, he said: “We must look for ways to get foreign currency because we do have to put food on the people’s table; we have to put goods on families’ homes and offer better quality services.”

A report in the official news outlet Cubadebate of the same meeting drew over a hundred comments, most complaining that government policies have produced little results and that authorities seem to lack a clear, urgent plan to meet public needs.

“We are already approaching April, and there is no economic improvement,” said a reader who identified himself as José. “The worst months of the year for farming are approaching. High food prices will prevail, deterioration in living standards and serious health problems will continue. Summer will be hell for ordinary Cubans, and transportation will remain at its worst. It is not that I am pessimistic; it is a harsh reality.”

The tone of most of the 2,000 comments in the YouTube section of “From the Presidency” also suggests the show did little to change opinions about the protests.

“It surprises me how you try to minimize the scope of the popular protests,” wrote Rosa María Sánchez Obregón. “The people there were not dissidents or counterrevolutionaries; they were suffering people who could no longer stand the hunger and what they were going through without electricity for 15 hours, without water, food, medicine, transportation and bread.”

“Do you think all these things are the fault of the blockade?” she asked, using the common Cuban expression for the U.S. economic embargo. “Why don’t we talk about corruption, bad planning, and the bad work of the elites who live better than the people? More than the blockade and defamation, corruption is today the greatest enemy of the revolution.”

Unwittingly, the show succeeded in one thing: producing a viral moment when Energy Minister Vicente de la O Levy, a guest on the show, implied that despite the extended blackouts Cubans suffered daily, things could be worse because there are countries where the government “does not provide electricity the whole year and do not provide electricity to the whole country.”

“Very few countries in the world,” he claimed,”have the electrification rate Cuba has.”