Bogotá.- “The revolution will never shy away from dialog with the people, as our reason for being is precisely to serve the people,” he reacted Miguel Díaz-Canel before the historic pressure exerted by university students, outraged after the government measure that increased internet rates in an impoverished society.

The strike launched by young people in different faculties of Havana and the rest of the country as last Monday was received in principle with stupor by the communist authorities. Propaganda devices denied that a strike had been convened, unprecedented in 66 years of Castroism, but at the same time Granma, the official body of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC), called for unity, and Roberto Morales, one of the strongmen of the PCC, demanded “close ranks” as if it were a new 11J, the day Cubans rebelled in the streets against the government.

“At times like this,there is no space for naivety,” said Morales,who added the usual arguments (blocking,empire,media war) to justify a protest arising from “within the ideological bastions of the regime,where is the replacement base of the official elite,” explained to The Nation the dissident leader Manuel Cuesta Morúa.

At the moment, the Cuban president has not ordered a reversal of the increase in internet rates, but the reality is that they have hit the population very hard, and the students, the quarry of the revolution, have stood up as their defenders. The University of Havana Faculties of Beliefs, History, Sociology, Mathematics, and Computing reaffirmed throughout the week that they would not attend classes as long as the rates are not reduced, student groups confirmed to this newspaper. Young people from other university centers in the capital and on the island have joined the initiative of their peers.

“students behave as spokesmen of the population; the people trust us with these spaces,” said one of the unemployed students during one of the open assemblies held these days in the university centers. The exchanges and complaints of the students with the authorities have filled social networks with episodes similar to the famous diatribe launched by the then-student leader Eliecer Ávila,now a dissident in Miami,against Ricardo Alarcón,many years President of Parliament.

The rate of Etecsa (Telecommunications Company of Cuba, which has the state monopoly) is so disproportionate that it has agitated the FEU, a strongly linked institution to the Union of Communist Youth (UJC). Even within the professors of teachers, there have been sporadic backups to the firm position of young people.

The new internet rates and data packages for cell phones entered into force on may 30; they also suppose the partial dollarization of the service.

Once again, the young/internet binomial has surprised the Castro power, as was the case in the popular uprising of 11J in 2021, which, when transmitted by the networks, spread through different parts of the country.

The boys complain bitterly as the main data package offered by Etecsa, which costs 360 Cuban pesos (almost one dollar in the informal market), is totally insufficient, which forces them to acquire extra packages at inaccessible prices, from 3360 pesos onwards (almost 9 dollars to blue). The minimum wage in Cuba is one of the worst in the region, only above the Venezuelan: 2100 Cuban pesos per month, which in the informal market would not reach six dollars.

“The rates exceed the minimum wage of any Cuban, and more and more dollarization makes it the flagship currency of this country. Why should the people be responsible for mismanagement and poor administration?” said one of the summons during the exchange of criteria with regime envoys.

“Our voice is not funded; it is critical and legitimate. We represent the feeling of the people. No crisis justifies insensitivity towards the needs of the people,” University leaders of the Faculty of Biology said on Saturday, planted firmly against the official leaders of the University Student Federation (FEU).

“We categorically reject any attempt to delegitimize our critical thinking and demands under false accusations of external manipulation. Our analysis comes out of the inalienable commitment to Cuba and its people, not of others’ interests,” he clarified in another statement distributed in networks by students of the Faculty of Interaction and Letters of Holguín.

Is it a timely criticism, or has social discontent reached the spine of the Revolution? Different analysts and intellectuals consulted by The Nation believe that both realities are added, that the weariness is deep in a society that has already changed but that simultaneously occurring, they are convinced that the government will be airy of this crisis with some adjustments on the rates.

“It is not even the demand itself, important as it is, but the plant to its institutions,” added Morúa.

At the moment, “classes to classes has decreased; the student strike is a reality. It is a criticism of the government to resolve things, which suffocates citizens. the outrage is collective. We will see if the reversal of the measures or in new mechanisms that benefit the entire people,” anonymously confirmed a militant of the socialist collective in struggle, which supports anonymously on-site the student movement.

Cuba suffers an eternal systemic crisis with a serious socioeconomic affectation from which it seems unfeasible to leave. “The Etecsa tariff is the trigger for the protest and at the same time the climax of a series of unpopular adjustment measures that have fallen especially in the working classes in an income extraction predator process. It must be remembered that the basis of the functioning of Cuban society is mounted on an expensive and precarious internet that has grown a lot,” he deepened The Nation the historian Armando Chaguaceda.

“No crisis justifies insensitivity towards the needs of the people.” – University Leaders, Faculty of Biology