Protests broke out in Santiago, Cuba, on Sunday as people took to the streets to denounce the communist government’s handling of widespread power outages and food shortages.
Many Cubans have taken to social media to express their frustrations with the inability of the country's rulers to solve what many see as basic living issues. Several online videos displayed citizens chanting “electricity and food” as they marched in public.
The island nation is currently suffering from one of the worst inflationary events in its history.
The United States Embassy in Havana reported additional demonstrations in other municipalities, while insisting in a statement that the government “respect the human rights of the protesters and attend to the legitimate needs of the Cuban people.”
The persistent economic stagnation has caused extensive migration to other countries in the region. In the last two years, a record 425,000 Cubans were encountered at various U.S. ports of entry.
On Monday, Cuba’s president, Miguel Diaz-Canel, blamed the U.S. for the current problems, saying on X that the situation is “being exploited by the enemies of the Revolution in order to destabilize.”
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