Opinion | Cuba is far more fragile than you think

It shouldn’t come as a surprise. The country has been experiencing its umpteenth crisis since 1959 Cuban Revolution. Everyday life is difficult for Cubans. It involves living without electricity and coping with fuel shortages, lining up endlessly to buy scarce groceries and facing illness without medications.

Unsurprisingly, vast numbers regularly attempt to flee the country. In 2022 alone, more than 300,000 Cubans arrived in the United States, a number that doesn’t include those who died at sea or were left behind while crossing Central America. Thousands more try to reach to other destinations.

But this crisis is not fundamentally different from previous ones in terms of severity. Instead, the X-Factor is the figure of Díaz-Canel himself — or rather, the vacuum that he represents. While it is assumed that 91-year-old former president Raúl Castro continues to call the shots behind the scenes, his public absence has instilled a sense of defiance among Cubans.

The dictatorships of Fidel and Raúl Castro had provided a living, symbolic link to the revolution for many Cubans. But without the Castros visibly at the helm, the government has lost what had sustained it through previous crises: the blind faith of its subjects. During the mass emigration of Cubans from the port of Mariel to the United States in 1980, or during tensions in the 1990s after the fall of the Berlin Wall or more recently when Cuba lost some of its access to Venezuelan oil, the regime could count on broad public support to see it through. Today, new cracks are appearing.

The absence of that symbolic power, along with the regular indignities of life in Cuba, has led to unprecedented public expressions of discontent. For example, in the summer of 2021, for the first time in over six decades, crowds took to the streets in 62 locations across the country to demand a change in the nation’s course. The regime responded with harsh repression, resulting in more than 1,700 political prisoners. And earlier this month, the government violently cracked down on people protesting widespread shortages in the town of Caimanera.

To make matters worse for the regime, Díaz-Canel is uncharismatic. He is a civilian bureaucrat without a revolutionary pedigree and with no oratorical skills. When he repeats the old formulas of the Castro brothers — “looking to the future,” “after the storm, the sun will shine,” “the only way to overcome the crisis is to stay united,” “trust in the decisions of the leaders” — the Cuban people simply don’t believe him. Díaz-Canel has been forced into a role that is far too big for him. When confronted by protest, his only recourse is to raise repression to outrageous levels.

That repression has not managed to eliminate discontent or dissent; it has only transformed it. Faced with the impossibility of expressing themselves openly, Cubans abstained from voting in large numbers. There was only one candidate, Díaz-Canel, from a single authorized party, the Communist Party. But of Cuba’s more than 8 million voters, only 75 percent participated, while the rest abstained. This is new. The regime is accustomed to almost absolute unanimity. During Fidel Castro’s time, voter turnout regularly exceeded 95 percent. And even Raúl Castro still mustered about 90 percent in 2013.

Of course, thanks to the indirect system that governs in Cuba, 97 percent of the 470 members of the Cuban parliament who acted as electors voted for Díaz-Canel as president without hesitation. Dressed in his military uniform, Raúl Castro, present in the chamber despite holding no public office, rose from his seat to be the first to congratulate him on his victory.

The status quo drags on. But it is crumbling year after year, month after month, and day after day.