Internet price increase in Cuba, a new deprivation for youth at the end – Liberation
Six is the number of gigabits (GB) to which Cubans are entitled each month on their phone. For this, they must pay the equivalent of 80 euro cents according to the informal exchange rate. However, with 6GB of the Internet, you can watch 6 consecutive hours of high definition video online. For a month, it does little. Except that to expand the additional 3GB package, you must now pay the equivalent of 7 euros per 3GB slice. A sum which represents more than half of the average monthly salary in the country (around € 13). This brutal increase in the price of internet packages took effect on May 30.
During a speaking dedicated to the subject on Wednesday June 4, Cuban Deputy Prime Minister Eduardo Martínez Díaz justified the increase due to the « Complex economic situation of the country » and asked for a « Citizen understanding » Faced with measures « Painful but necessary ». Grateful to have « Badly communicated »he described this increase as necessary to finance the repair of communication infrastructure. This did not appease the anger of the Cuban population, and in particular of youth, already deprived of almost everything. She mobilized during an unprecedented strike on Wednesday.
In a country where the university devotes the greatest number of its teachers to the teaching of « Marxism-Leninism », the government is anxious to keep some control over young minds. The national company ETECSA therefore made some concessions to allow students to slightly increase the rate of the Internet at a supervised price. Insufficient for the University of Havana student medical federation, which called for the lessons on Wednesday. An initiative welcomed by the federations of history, philosophy, as well as the teachers of the Faculty of Sociology, but not explicitly followed.
No journalist was there to see the follow -up of the strike, but according to Cuban students contacted by AFP, the amphitheatres were almost deserted. Anxious to stem the dispute, the management of the university minimized the movement: « Nothing and no one has interrupted the teaching processes« She said by press release this Wednesday.
This large -scale mobilization has been the first since the demonstrations against the Castro regime which had broken out in July 2021especially because of the strong shortages. Already, students were at the heart of a mobilization born of sharing via social networks a protest rap clip. Accessing the Internet, now practically a luxury, had been essential to organize the dispute.
This price increase sets fire to the powder while Cubans are already faced with perpetual shortages water, transport and food and systematic power failures. « In a country where official propaganda continues to be suffocating and where the regime is trying to control each corner of daily life, access to the web has become an escape from the crisis, » note Independent journalist Yoani Sánchez.
Added to this are professional prospects blocked for young adults. A situation that leads many of them to leave the country. Since 2021, Cuba has experienced his most massive period of exodus since the 1959 revolution. Between August 2021 and October 2024, nearly 750,000 Cubans have joined the United States. A flight that strengthens the country’s economic slump.
