Days after anti-government protests erupted in Cuba, thousands took to the streets of Miami to show solidarity.
Miami – Hector Consuegra escaped Cuba with his family 18 years ago, fleeing from the communist-controlled island where, he said, there is “no respect for the people, no human rights, nothing.” He would like to return one day when a future of life and liberty is restored.
Nury Gomez’s mom left Cuba as a young woman in 1980 during the Mariel boatlift. Gomez said her activism is driven by her mom’s desire to see Cuba free in her lifetime.
Alina Zerpa, whose grandfather was a Cuban political prisoner, said that if the island is freed from its dictatorship, she’ll be “on the first flight over there” to see her “roots.”
Consuegra, Gomez, and Zerpa were among the thousands of people in South Florida — the center of the Cuban diaspora in the U.S. — who have taken to the streets over the past four days to demonstrate and to show their support for the dissidents across Cuba who are engaged in the largest anti-government protests on the island in decades. The protests in Cuba, the largest since at least the mid 1990s, erupted Sunday.
Cuba’s president, Miguel Diaz-Canel, has tried to blame the uprising on U.S. sanctions and American mercenaries, and he has deployed security forces to crack down on protesters. But the demonstrators in South Florida and elsewhere are clear: This is fundamentally a fight for freedom.
In Miami, throngs of demonstrators have been gathering daily at Café Versailles, the famous Cuban-American restaurant in the Little Havana neighborhood. On Tuesday, demonstrators blocked highway traffic, and another crowd gathered near the campus of Florida International University to sing, wave Cuban flags, and listen to the impassioned speakers.
The crowds include former political prisoners, recent migrants, and the children of people who fled the island decades ago. They all have unique stories and reasons for demonstrating. Some support a military intervention on the island, some do not. But they all share a general goal: freedom for the Cuban people after 62 years of living under a ruthless communist dictatorship. And they all seem to share the optimism that this may be the start of a new beginning on the island.
“I think this is the moment,” Consuegra told National Review on Tuesday while standing with his wife and daughter under an awning at Café Versailles to avoid the heavy rain. “What is happening in Cuba never happened before, so I think this is the moment, and that’s why we are here.”
‘There Is No Life in Cuba’
Consuegra, 59, and his family fled Cuba because “there is no life in Cuba, absolutely no life,” he said. “The government controls everything. I lived in Cuba for 43 years, so I know what it is.”
He and his family have been watching the Cuban protests unfold on television. They live in New Jersey now, but they were vacationing in Miami this week, and they felt the need to join the demonstration at Café Versailles. They came to send a message of support to the Cuban people and also to send a message to President Joe Biden and his administration. Consuegra said he is an advocate for a humanitarian intervention in Cuba.
“Cuba needs it,” he said. “The people need it. They are dying from government abuses.”
Consuegra said he would definitely like to go back to Cuba, if and when the Communist government eventually falls.
‘Nobody Wants Communism’
Manuel Rodriguez, 29, draped himself in a Cuban flag while attending the demonstration Tuesday night near the FIU campus. Rodriguez was born and raised in Cuba. He escaped to the U.S. in 2008, when he was a teenager.
Rodriguez said he wishes he was in Cuba now to stand with the protesters. “I’m pretty sure all of us wish we were there, honestly,” he said, looking into a sea of more than a thousand people waving Cuban flags. But because he can’t be in Cuba, he said, he felt he had a responsibility to come out to the rally to support the protesters on the island.
Sometimes Rodriguez speaks as if the Cuban government has already been toppled. “This is a day we never thought would come, if this is the day,” he said, catching himself. But he realizes that is no sure thing, at least not yet. He used to be an advocate for military intervention, but now he’s not so sure. He doubts the Biden administration will take any drastic steps to end the Communist dictatorship. “I don’t think it’s important enough for them,” Rodriguez said.
He’s not sure what would happen in Cuba if the government were to fall.
“Everybody wants different things,” he said. “But the common factor is, that nobody wants communism. That we know.”
‘There’s No Fear Anymore’
Nury Gomez attended the rally at Café Versailles on Tuesday with her husband, Laslo, and with her mother-in-law.
Her husband’s family still has relatives on the island, including her husband’s grandmother. Gomez, 38, was born in the U.S., but her mother grew up in Cuba, fleeing with her two sons — Gomez’s brothers — during the 1980 boatlift. She said her mom was married to a political prisoner in Cuba, and her two brothers are his sons.
Gomez said everyone at the demonstrations has their own reasons for being there. “It’s important for me for my mom to see Cuba to be free. She’s 74. That’s my reason,” she said.
There’s something different about this uprising that gives Gomez hope that there could be real change coming on the island. Supporters of the freedom movement are sprouting all over, she said. There’s a new dynamic with Fidel Castro dead and his brother Raul Castro stepping down earlier this year as head of the Cuban Communist Party. “If Fidel was in power right now, this wouldn’t have happened,” Gomez said. And maybe most important, she said, “all Cuba has done something they’ve never done: They lost fear. There’s no fear anymore.”
Gomez said she is a supporter of a military intervention on the island. Biden, she said, needs to “step up” and help the Cuban people. But the rallies in Florida and elsewhere aren’t just to send a message to Biden, Gomez said.
“I see this as a message to humans in general,” she said. “This is something that we all need to be together to do. It’s not being against Biden or not. It’s about all being together.”
A Show of Support From an Iranian American
Sandra Madjdi is not Cuban. But the 45-year-old whose family fled to the U.S. from Iran in 1979, when she was a little girl, feels a clear connection with her Cuban-American friends.
“Our experiences are different, but I think the passion and love that we have toward our culture and its people, that’s the same,” said Madjdi, who attended Tuesday’s demonstration at Café Versailles with some of her Cuban-American friends. “We were all forced to call this home, and yet we love this place, too.”
She said she attended Tuesday’s rally in the rain at Café Versailles to show solidarity with her friends and clients in the Cuban-American community.
“Watching them suffer with their family members still on the island, having no food, having no electricity, having censorship and violence, it’s crucial to my spirit just to be out here and to show them love and support,” Madjdi said.
Madjdi remembers the protests that erupted in 2000 over Elián Gonzalez, the 5-year-old Cuban boy who became the center of an international custody dispute. But the protests now are different, “a vibration that’s never happened before,” she said.
Describing herself as an American patriot, Madjdi said she hopes the uprisings in Cuba will send a message to the “youth of this country, that hate this country so much” to appreciate the freedoms they have. Many Americans, she said, don’t know how good they have it. “They don’t. “They’re spoiled rotten.”
‘Fighting for Their Lives’
Alina Zerpa’s grandfather was a political prisoner in Cuba who was once sentenced to death on the island for working with the CIA, she said. Instead of being killed, he was released in 1979, and he and his family were exiled to Miami. They haven’t been allowed back since.
Zerpa, 26, attended the rally near FIU on Tuesday with her mother and aunt. U.S. military intervention may be the best hope for ending the communist tyranny on the island once and for all, she suggested. Her mother, Alina Munero, 63, was less convinced of that.
“Only the police have guns,” Zerpa said. “The people are unarmed. What, they have a rock and a knife?”
Munero said the images coming out of Cuba are “very sad,” though the Cuban people protesting across the island know they have the support of the exile community in the U.S. “They are suffering there, but we are here for moral support.”
Zerpa said she’s been surprised by the size and breadth of the island-wide protests. She was skeptical that the protests would generate much coverage in the U.S., but she’s been happy with the attention the uprising has received from the corporate media.
“Obviously, I wish the [Cuban] regime would end,” Zerpa said. “Those people deserve human rights. It’s upsetting that people are, like, ‘Oh, it’s because of the COVID vaccine.’ No, they don’t care about the vaccines. They are literally fighting for their lives.”