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-two 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. The uprising became known as the Maleconazo.
During the summer of 1994, Cubans were angry. The so-called “Special Period,” marked by scarcity and hunger, was underway. News was also circulating 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.
State Security agents, political police, and paramilitaries shot protestersand beat them with batons and clubs. In Havana, military trucks carrying special troops and .50-caliber machine guns patrolled the streets.
The Castro government made clear its willingness to fire on unarmed, nonviolent demonstrators. Cubans were beaten, shot, and jailed. Thirty-two years later, the full scale of the 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. These images 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 described what he experienced, including 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 show a man wearing dark glasses, a white shirt, and khaki trousers, holding a short firearm. In one, he stands in front of the hotel pointing upward; in another, he aims directly toward Poort; in others, he runs toward the protesters.
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
At least three Cubans were killed, hundreds were injured, and 370 were arrested.
Like their Chinese communist counterparts in 1989, the Castro regime demonstrated its determination to cling to power in August 1994, no matter the cost in lives. It did so again in July 2021, when Miguel Díaz-Canel said 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 reflected on the nature of dictatorships more broadly, noting that their survival rests on the extreme ruthlessness of its dictator.
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