On Thursday, May 30, young people from the José Martí district, in the city of Santiago de Cuba, staged a unique protest taking the form of a conga march touring different neighborhoods in the populous city, the country's second most important, singing refrains that called for "electricity" and "food." The demonstration toured three very poor neighborhoods of the city —Indaya, Barca de Oro and Nuevo Vista Alegre— before being broken up by forces that included the use of Red Berets (special army troops). The events were widely covered on social media, with photos and videos capturing what happened.
A day earlier, on Wednesday 29, residents of Camino de La Habana, in Sancti Spíritus, banged pots and pans in the middle of the street shouting the same slogans of "electricity" and "food," which has become another hallmark of spontaneous, consensual protest across the Island. Asking for his identity to be withheld, one resident told the independent press that "people went out onto the streets, it wasn't inside the houses. Even the old men went out with their pots and spoons... It was very exciting, because they were arresting people, but those of us who were left kept beating our pots. We weren't afraid because they couldn't stop us all... My neighbors realized they couldn't load the entire town in that police truck." Another local said that at her workplace, her boss told her that "it was impressive: the police were patrolling the area and people wouldn’t get out of the way, in the middle of the street; they were testing them with their pots... He says that he didn't leave his house because he was afraid of losing his job, but that he beat his pot in his yard." The next day the electricity was restored and the people of Spiritist enjoyed 24 hours without any blackouts.
Blackouts and protests, increasingly original and daring, have become an everyday part of the Cuban reality. On May 18, Father Alberto Reyes the parish priest at the Iglesia de Esmeralda in the province of Camagüey, rang the bells of his parish 30 times, slowly, as a sign of mourning, during one of the frequent blackouts that have racked the island in recent years. In a message posted on social media, the priest explained that the bells were tolled against the "agonizing death of our freedom and our rights, the suffocation and sinking of our lives," and announced that he would repeat the ringing every time there was a blackout. He also urged Cubans to engage in gestures of "peaceful resistance," such as abandoning official institutions, removing posters in favor of the system in private homes, educating their children in "the rejection of duplicity" and using "whatever ways one can find." A day later the Archbishop of Camagüey, Wilfredo Pino, forbade him to continue with his initiative. In response to questions from Radio Martí, Monsignor Pino explained that he had called Father Reyes on Sunday, May 19. "I told him that, for the sake of the Church, and for his own, I was forbidding him from ringing the bell during blackouts," the prelate said in a somewhat cryptic statement that can be interpreted in different ways.
Not surprisingly, the reaction of the ecclesiastical hierarchy accorded with the well-known argument of struggling to strike a precarious balance between Church and State in Cuba. The debate is eternal, and not limited to the territory or the Cuban situation. In his celebrated novel Christ Recrucified, Greek writer Nikos Kazantkis describes a similar situation during the Turkish occupation of Greece in the 1920s. There was an excellent film version of the literary work, directed by Jules Dassin, entitled The One Who Must Die, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 1957, where it was one of the nominees for the Palme d 'Or for Best Film, and garnered a Special Mention and the International Catholic Film Office (OCIC) Prize, shared with Fellini's celebrated classic Nights of Cabiria. 100 years after what Kazantkis described in Greece, the scenario is the same in 21st-century Cuba. Nor is it limited to Church-State relations, but also to international diplomatic ones, where in countless cases, not only Cuba, human rights are sacrificed in the interest of what has been errantly dubbed realpolitik, whose maximum exponent can be considered German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck. The history of where the placing of interests over rights leads speaks for itself.
There is always, however, an exogenous, disruptive element capable of foiling these pseudo-diplomatic networks: the citizen, who is not the object or subject of realpolitik. One of the main factors that sustain the status quo is the permanence of dictatorships over time, propagating the fallacy that they will be there forever. Consequently, projecting images and visions that break this pattern rattles a mentality that has embraced obedience, whether out of fear, apathy, or self-interest. In 2014 in Burkina Faso, the movement that ended Blas Campaoré's 27-year dictatorship used the image of The Civic Broom to sweep away the culture of fear and apathy there. In Cuba, the refrain "It's over" from the song Patria y Vida (Homeland and Life) has planted in the people's minds the notion that the regime's days may be numbered, whatever that figure may be. Art is one of the most powerful vehicles for implanting ideas in the public's consciousness.
The truth is that, as recent events demonstrate, in different places and in different ways all across the country there has been a fracturing of socio-political behavior in Cuba, a rupture with everything that is considered logical, acceptable, and even "normal." One must be blind not to see this trend and believe that it can be reversed through more repression and prohibitions. People have learned to express themselves, and they will continue to do so, and churches are not the only places with bells in Cuba, nor are bells the only objects available to people to express their discontent. There are also pots and pans, congas, and even whistles. Once a vision of change permeates a person's mind, it will stay there until it is realized. The bells are ringing again, precisely where they have the greatest effect: in Cubans' hearts and minds.