Happy workers in sugar fields. The dashing Che Guevara. Bearded heroes clutching AK-47s. And, of course, Fidel Castro. Love it or hate it, the Cuban revolution has been one of the most successfully marketed political projects of the 20th century.
One target of the skilful propaganda, especially during the Cold War, was the West, where those blood-red posters of Guevara ended up on walls of countless student rooms, while Cuba became an inspiring symbol, for some, of glorious rebellion.
But the most important audience for the revolutionary mythology was the domestic one: inside the island. Their colours may be fading these days but billboards recording Castro’s once-stirring slogans — “Ever onward to victory!” — are still prominent everywhere. Most state offices have a portrait of Castro, who died in 2016. Cuban children vow to “be like Che” at the beginning of every school day. They learn Spanish using textbooks where grammar is drummed into young minds through the repeated re-telling of revolutionary fables.
Government opponents say the time for a new script is long overdue. They see the protests which rocked the country on July 11 — by far the biggest in six decades — as a turning point, akin to a national confession that most people want change and the slogans of four generations ago have become meaningless.
“The [ruling] clique’s myth was totally shattered”, Yunior García Aguilera, an opposition playwright, told the independent media website Periodismo de Barrio. He was arrested during the protests and thrown into a government lorry, before later being released.
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“It became clear that a large proportion of the Cuban people is fed up. They no longer want this social pact that has lasted too long and has rusted, is stagnant, is obsolete,” he said.
García Aguilera, 29, is one of several new opposition figures in Cuba, part of a group which has entirely replaced the island’s traditional political dissidents, who for decades were routinely bullied, infiltrated, imprisoned and sometimes tolerated by Castro.
The group is without an obvious leader and mainly made up of artists, actors and musicians. Many were provoked into open criticism when in 2018 the government passed a censorship law which banned them from performing in public or private spaces without the approval of the ministry of culture.
Now they appear to be relishing their revenge, buoyed by the fact that tens of thousands of ordinary Cubans have made their anger with the regime clear and overcome their fear by taking to the streets.
‘The bluff of The Revolution�� is going to end”, tweeted Tania Bruguera, an installation artist, yesterday. The daughter of a former minister in Castro’s government, she has been repeatedly detained and jailed in recent years as a result of her work, much of which challenges the idea of allowing a privileged few to speak for a nation.
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That same theme is the key message of a massive hip-hop hit Patria y Vida, or “Homeland and Life”, which was a collaboration between some of Cuba’s best known musicians earlier this year. Its title is a play on one of Castro’s rallying calls, “Homeland or Death”. It lambasts the government for hijacking patriotic symbols while failing to provide for the people.
“Who told you that Cuba is yours?” chant the dissident rappers. The song has become an anthem of protest and was heard repeatedly during the July 11 demonstrations. “It is over!” is its booming refrain.
Such a bold claim is premature. Miguel Díaz-Canel, who has been president since 2018 and took over as of head of the communist party from Raúl Castro in April, retains the support of the Cuban military, which controls much of the economy, and the loyalty of the police, which suppressed the protests last month by arresting more than 700 people. There have not been any significant demonstrations since.
Díaz-Canel, like his Castro predecessors, has blamed the island’s significant economic problems largely on the US embargo which has been in place since the 1960s and was tightened by President Trump. In an attempt to calm the situation following the protests, the former party apparatchik has agreed to some reforms including allowing travellers to bring in unlimited amounts of food and medicine.
He insists the revolution still has the majority support of Cubans, and to make that point the communist party organised an old-school pro-government rally in Havana today.
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But the challenge he faces to quieten discontent seems daunting. The Cuban economy is in its weakest state since the early 1990s collapse of its former benefactor, the Soviet Union. The pandemic, which is worsening in Cuba, has destroyed tourism, while chronic internal inefficiencies, US sanctions, and a drop in support from its crisis-racked ally, Venezuela, have made a bad situation worse.
Pretences of an egalitarian state are fast fading in a country where waiters can earn ten times as much as doctors, while a cash-hungry government builds luxury hotels and sets up hard currency stores, accessible to those who have families abroad, but beyond the reach of everyone else.
Since 2018, when Cubans were allowed internet on their mobile phones, which is another significant source of income for the government, social media has only amplified the voices of discontent, and made protest far easier to organise.
“Cuba is a different country now” García Aguilera said. The ruling elite, he added, had completely failed to come up with an updated narrative to justify a one-party state in 2021. It needed to “recognise that there is an opposition now”. Unless it did, he warned, the apparent calm on the streets will not last.
