The Maleconazo, the Castro dictatorship and their will to power
Cubans have been calling for freedom for decades. On July 11, 2021, hundreds of thousands of people across the island took part in nationwide protests, and the World took notice.
It was not the first time.
Thirty one years ago, on August 5, 1994, thousands of Cubans marched through Havana’s streets chanting “Freedom!” and “Down with the Castros” for the first time since the early 1960s in what became known as the Maleconazo.
During the Summer of 1994 Cubans were angry. The so-called “Special Period” which meant scarcity and hunger was underway, and news that Cuban government agents had murdered 37 Cubans who had tried to flee the island on the “13 de Marzo” tugboat on July 13, 1994 was circulating among the populace.
State Security agents, political police, and paramilitaries shot protesters and/or beat them down with batons and clubs.
In Havana, military trucks containing special troops and 50 caliber machine guns patrolled the streets, and the Castro government demonstrated the will to shoot at unarmed nonviolent protesters.
Cubans were beaten down, shot, and jailed. Thirty one years later and the full scale of repression remains unknown.
What we do know, is thanks to a courageous few.
The Dutch eyewitness
Karel Poort, a Dutch freelance photographer and tourist visiting Cuba, took photos during the 1994 protests, which were made public in 2013 and matched the anecdotal accounts of the day. In an exclusive interview with EFE published on August 4, 2024 he outlined what he experienced that day, including witnessing government agents dressed as civilians firing wildly at demonstrators.
When the Dutchman arrived at the hotel opposite the Malecón, a Cuban approached him and said: “Keep taking photos and show the disaster that exists here in your country.” “While this was happening, a group of plainclothes police arrived at the Deauville and started shooting wildly,” he recalls.
Among the thirty photos that Poort gave to EFE, several can be seen of a man, wearing dark glasses, a white shirt and khaki trousers, with a short firearm in his hand. In one of them he is in front of the hotel, pointing upwards; in another he is pointing directly towards Poort and in others he is seen running towards where the protesters were.
Half an hour after those events, a patrol car stopped behind the photographer: “Three policemen ordered me to hand over the film and the camera. They grabbed me and, miraculously, I managed to get away and ran as fast as I could towards my hotel (…) I was able to take more photos from the window of my room,” he adds.
What is known now
What is known is that at least three Cubans were killed, hundreds injured, and 370 arrested.
Like their Chinese communist counterparts in 1989 , the Castro regime demonstrated its will to hang on to power in August 1994 no matter the cost in lives, and did it again in July 2021 with Miguel Diaz-Canel saying the quiet part out loud: “They would have to pass over our dead bodies if they want to confront the Revolution, and we are willing to resort to anything.
On July 30, 2019 journalist Charles Lane wrote an important essay in The Washington Post on Cuba that reflects on the nature of dictatorships at large and that their survivability was based on their extreme ruthlessness.
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