Cuba Faces More Protests as Food Shortages, Power Outages Continue

“Down with communism, down with Díaz-Canel,” a Cuban woman chants defiantly. The unidentified woman appears in a video of the latest wave of protests in Cuba this week against the island’s communist government and its president, Miguel Díaz-Canel. It’s one of several posted on Facebook and passed to VOA as demonstrations broke out in at least five locations across the country. The protests, prompted by prolonged blackouts and food and medicine shortages, were the largest since October 2022 following a power cut that lasted nearly a week in the wake of Hurricane Ian. Anna Ayuso, a Latin America specialist at the Barcelona Center for International Affairs, said Cuba was bankrupt and unable to pay for imports on which it depends for food and other essentials. “There is scarcity of medicine, food, delays of delivering help from the World Health Program. Everything is collapsing because Cuba has no foreign exchange to buy these things and it produces next to nothing,” she told VOA.