Angry cries of ‘freedom!’ (‘libertad!’) and ‘Fatherland and life’ (‘Patria y Vida’) – a play on Fidel Castro’s revolutionary slogan, ‘Fatherland or Death’ – could be heard across Cuba throughout March, as hundreds took to the streets of several cities to voice their rage at the country’s severe lack of food and electricity.

The protests came at a difficult time for the government of President Miguel Díaz-Canel, who has been in office since 2019. In February, Díaz-Canel dismissed his close ally, Alejandro Gil, as minister of economy and in an official note in March accused him of corruption. As is often the case in Cuba, where the official press carries the government line and independent media is censored and persecuted, no one has revealed the nature of this corruption.

Díaz-Canel may have hoped Gil’s dismissal would quell the growing discontent, but weeks later, on 1 March, the government-approved 500% rise in petrol prices came into effect. While in office, Gil had said the government could no longer subsidise fuel due to the need to reduce the deficit.

The soaring petrol prices coincided with a universal increase in water and electricity prices, as well as an additional 25% uptick in electricity costs for the highest consumers. The latter measure was announced by the minister of finance and prices, Vladimir Regueiro, as part of a package agreed by Parliament in December 2023 with the aim of reducing the fiscal deficit.

These price hikes come months after a parliamentary session acknowledged that Cuba’s 2023 inflation rate had hit 30%. Several gas stations and grocery shops no longer accept Cuban pesos, only dollars, while salaries are not recovering their purchasing power. In February, the average monthly salary was 4,560 Cuban pesos ($14.70), while the cost of a basic food basket is 20,000 Cuban pesos per month. Meanwhile power shortages last up to 14 hours per day in some areas due to a shortage of fuel and maintenance works on the island’s largest thermoelectric plant.

The daily misery being caused by this lack of food and electricity cannot be solved through ministerial change. Many Cubans are desperate for a change in the political system, though the country’s criminalisation of peaceful protest and lack of free press means it is hard to gauge how widespread the anger is.

Many people mistrust the leaders of the Communist Party – Cuba’s only official political party, which has ruled since its founding in 1965 – and the military-run Business Administration Group (GAESA, by its Spanish acronym), which manages everything from hotels and retail shops to customs and ports. They are also wary of the relatives of former presidents Fidel and Raúl Castro.

These groups are all seen as the elite – a privileged few, who have access to dollars and a high standard of living, while 88% of the population lives in poverty, according to the Cuban Observatory of Human Rights. The Cuban revolution’s dream of a classless society has turned into a nightmare of misery and lies.

Less than three years ago, on 11 July 2021, thousands of Cubans took to the streets to protest shortages of food, medicine and electricity, as well as the government’s measures to reduce the spread of Covid-19, which negatively impacted the economy.

The nationwide demonstrations were the largest against the government since Cuba’s 1959 revolution, and the state responded with widespread repression. Although it is hard to come by accurate figures, the best estimates suggest that around 1,000 protesters, including 55 minors, were imprisoned. Government supporters also threw sticks at protesters, while the Black Berets, the branches of the army that act as riot police, used weapons against them.

This repression will continue, as the government tries to convince people that the Cuban revolution – despite its obvious failure – is ongoing and that it should remain in power.

In a world where authoritarianism is increasing, democratising Cuba through a peaceful transition process would be an achievement not only for Cubans but for all who value democracy. The Cuban people will not be able to advance such reforms alone – they will require external support, from Latin American, the European Union, the US and Canada.

Yet some politicians in Western democracies still hold a romanticised view of Cuba as a socialist paradise where all people are treated equally, or are at least overly lenient of its treatment of its citizens. Speaking after the July 2021 protests, for example, Spain’s president, Pedro Sánchez, who leads the country’s Socialist Workers’ Party, dared only to say that Cuba is not a democracy, but avoided calling it a dictatorship.

Fear and the daily struggle to survive prevent Cubans from carrying out another large-scale protest like that of July 2021. Many believe it is easier to simply leave Cuba than try to reform the political system. The past two years have seen 466,000 undocumented Cuban migrants enter the US – the highest number in two consecutive years since the 1959 revolution, according to the US Customs and Border Protection. A further 67,000 Cubans last year travelled to the US under Parole, a family reunification programme introduced by Joe Biden’s administration, which allows US citizens or legal residents to apply for entry to the US for their family members from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela.

The government's response to the 17 March protests has been limited to sending more rice, sugar and milk for children to some supermarkets in the province of Santiago de Cuba, where the majority of the protests took place, and requesting aid from the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) for the first time. The WFP is now sending powdered milk for children up to the age of six to the country. Meanwhile, the Cuban government has also shirked all responsibility – blaming the US embargo – which has for more than 65 years prevented US businesses from trading with Cuban firms – for the country’s economic plight, and accusing the US of being behind the demonstration.

Italian philosopher and Communist politician Antonio Gramsci famously once said: “The old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.” This has rung true in Cuba since July 2021, when the leaders of Cuba’s failed revolution saw their power hung in the balance, and did everything in their power to prevent the new from being born. Jail, exile and migration, blackouts, internet cuts and shortages of basic goods plunged Cubans into a daily struggle to feed themselves and their children.

While the government was able to crush the dissident San Isidro Movement – which was behind the 11 July 2021 demonstrations and demands greater freedom of expression and rights to protest – the island is far from reaching social peace. The Communist leaders may believe they are safe, but even without democracy, people find a way to vote against them, either through migration, when they can, or timid protests. How much more suffering can they cause in order to maintain their regime and its privileges?