Cuba “won’t last another week,” analyst warns.

5 junio 2026

Hola y welcome back to CubaCurious.

Thanks for being here and caring about what’s happening in Cuba.

If you have little time today for reading, please consider clicking the links to the videos in the piece. They’ll bring you right to the heart of the protests.

Watching the intensifying street protests in Cuba it’s easy to forget that they were extremely rare until about five years ago. If offending the symbols of the revolution or criticizing the regime online are serious crimes, what would the punishment be for shouting No los queremos! (we don’t want them) and ¡Qué se vayan!” (Make them leave) in the middle of the street?

Cubans are shouting those slogans and worse—and more often. Protests are part of daily life now, incredibly. In the first three days of June, OCDH (Observatory for Cuban Human Rights) tracked 60 protests across the island. The cazerolazos (pan-banging protests) breaking out now are no longer happening at night, but in broad daylight, as happened this weekend in el Vedado, Havana’s most upscale neighborhood. The days of people hiding in their homes during cazerolazos, of covering their faces when they braved the streets, seem to be dwindling.

The narrator of the video reports protests breaking out throughout Havana on May 31st, saying it’s “another night of with people in the streets.” Citizens remained in the streets of Central Havana even after power was restored, shouting ¡Libertad¡, Abajo Raul (Down with the Raul) and expletive-filled insults against Cuba’s appointed president Miguel Díaz Canel.

Repression is growing too, creating a vicious cycle that fuels citizen anger and propels them back into the streets again in protest. There are signs of how the regime’s hardline is backfiring. In Artemisa, when political police showed up the day after a recent protest to arrest people, residents poured out of their homes and repelled the guards, saving—for now—the alleged protesters they were about to arrest.

Many are saying the repression is also getting uglier. Yoani Sánchez, in her 4 June Cafecito Informativo podcast, recalled a mother who’d participated in a neighborhood protest. Agents found her and threatened to take custody of her child. “You have to be a rat . . . to threaten a mother with taking her child for having protested precisely because she had nothing to feed him.”

The consensus among average Cubans and experts in this Martí Noticias article (Spanish) is that the level of desperation is higher than ever, perhaps worse than when 11J broke out. Cuban economist Emilio Morales believes the targeted U.S. sanctions against GAESA, the military’s conglomerate that controls an estimated 70% of the Cuban economy, have dealt a crushing blow to the regime.

“Those who bet on Cuba more than 30 years ago are seeing that this story has come to an end. The end of the regime is just around the corner. It can happen in weeks,” he said in a recent interview.

Without electricity, water, food, medicine, surrounded by mountains of uncollected trash, and impoverished by sky high inflation, a significant majority of Cubans are blaming the regime for their misery. The intensifying protests show no sign of dying out. In some areas citizens have not dispersed even after power was restored, as they had in the past. Shouts of Libertad continued, echoing a new graffiti making the rounds. “Queremos DCER0” refers to beginning from zero, not from a reformed system. It’s not just about electricity anymore.

These Cubans believe the regime is irreformable, even if it were interested in meaningful change, something it has rejected since 1959.

Cubans are shouting for a new model and new leaders, loud and proud. They’ve done so before, but this time they’ve reached their limit, and they know the world is watching.

A few other news bits for you below. Let me now what you think, and please subscribe, share or click the heart to stay in touch and help others find CubaCurious.

Hasta la semana que viene.

Ana

*11J is shorthand in Cuba for the spontaneous countrywide protests that broke out on 11 and 12 June 2021. Thousands of Cubans marched peacefully, shouting anti-regime slogans in an estimated 60 cities and towns. But when Cuba’s appointed president, Miguel Díaz Canel gave the order on national television for revolutionaries to “combat” protestors, violence broke out. Videos showed busloads of plainclothes agents carrying clubs arriving at protests, police firing into crowds, canine units and shock troops dragging people from their homes.

Thousands of people were arrested. The regime claimed only one man was killed. Many civilians were tried in military courts for charges that carried sentences of up to 22 years. According to NGOs, 300 of the original 11J political prisoners remain behind bars.

Cuba News Bits

• Peso-to-dollar reached a new high of 600 pesos to $1 U.S.

• One of the Cuban pilots indicted two weeks ago for the killing of the Brothers to the Rescue volunteers pled guilty to immigration fraud in Jacksonville, FL, this week. Yup. He was in the land of the imperial enemy and living well, having arrived in 2023 through the Biden era humanitarian parole program. When he applied for permanent residency, he forgot to mention his history in the Cuban military. Whoops.

• U.S. sanctions targeting GAESA triggered pullouts from Cuba of several hotel chains in recent days, including Spain’s Meliá. It’s thought they’ll return to their decades-long partnerships but through non GAESA groups. (GAESA has so many affiliates that won’t be too hard to do.) But with tourism in steep decline since the pandemic, Meliá may move its investments elsewhere.

  I don’t think average Cubans will care much; they’re generally not allowed inside luxury hotels. And the Cubans who work for the hotels are not paid directly by the foreign investors, who pay the regime the workers’ salaries in hard currency. The regime gives workers a fraction of the payment—and in pesos. Let’s hope any new economic model eliminates the regime middle man.

  Maybe the pullout will ease the anger Cubans feel when they see the military’s luxury hotels ablaze in light during blackouts. Maybe.

  Cuban state media responded to the bad press with a major clean up in the GAESA aisle this week. Officials extolled the group’s contributions to Cuban society, its work building homes, creating recreation centers for children, and helping the most vulnerable Cubans. News to most Cubans. The regime called the conglomerate GAE, dropping the SA (Sin Association, unincorporated), apparently to sweep away its business DNA. As if.

• U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio was questioned about Cuba in budget and policy hearings in D.C. this week. He: outed GAESA for its abuse of Cuba’s resources and lack of accountability to the Cuban people; said there are “technocrats” in Cuba willing to reform, but couldn’t share the names; believes the regime, as it is, cannot reform itself; suggested looking at the Czech Republic as a transition model for Cuba; and reiterated that the U.S. is “open to a negotiating scenario that puts Cuba on a path towards democracy.”

  Identifying those flexible technocrats will be tricky. They’ve survived in the regime’s highly suspicious and quick-to-condemn ecosystem by covering up any trace of reformist thinking. Buena suerte, Marco.

• Eddy Ceballos, creator of the Despingovery Channel, a parody site, will be prosecuted for “invasion of military property,” a crime that doesn’t exist in Cuban civil or military penal codes. Go figure. His shows focus on the difficulties and absurdities of Cuba’s reality. The preview on Instagram that triggered his arrest Monday was for an episode filmed at an abandoned military facility. Eddy mocked the remains of Soviet-era weapons and equipment. His family is still trying to see him. ”The instructor told us that he is going to be processed, but we still cannot see him . . . We really don’t know how he is,” a family member [told CubaNet] on condition of anonymity out of fear of reprisals.”

  Reporters Without Borders ranked Cuba 160 out of 180 countries for press freedom in its 2026 report.

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Cuban Treat of the Week

Sueño, Dream, is a beautiful wish expressed in song. Freedom for Cuba, reunited families, respect for human rights, a dignified life. Yotuel, on the right below, was one of the Cuban musicians behind the protest anthem Patria y Vida.

Cuban artists Arturo Sandoval and JenCarlos brought their talent to the project too.

Lyrics below the video.

“I know the sun is about to rise again.”

Praying it happens soon.

Verse 1

I know the sun is about to rise again
That we are about to hold hands
And fill ourselves with hope once more
And overcome all the bad things from the past

Verse 2

I know we are about to meet again
And build what we have dreamed of for so long
Wait for me in the same place
Wait for me, it won’t be long until we hug each other

Chorus

Dream, that is my dream
A dream that is our dream
Dream of freedom
Dream, that is my dream
A dream that is our dream
Dream of freedom (my dream)

Verse 3

Today I invite you to walk through my fields
Without electricity, drinking water, and on muddy roads
Where children dream of a flying Superman
Who could save them from the 6-hour walk to school

Pre-Chorus

This is my way of telling you
Once again in the form of a song
For a much better future
And to shout to you with emotion

Verse 4

That you will rise again like a lotus flower
Cuba, it won’t be long
So much injustice, so much hate, so many broken hearts
So many rafters and tears in this photo
How many lies we believed from those madmen
But we do not forget our roots
The blood running through us belongs to the Mambises (independence fighters)
We are about to start another game
But this time we want Homeland and Life (Patria y Vida)

Chorus

Dream, (oh, that is my dream) that is my dream
A dream that is our dream
Dream of freedom (dream of freedom)
Dream, that is my dream
A dream that is our dream
Dream of freedom (my dream)

Outro

Only that, the only thing I ask for is freedom
Oh, that is my dream, that is my dream
A dream that is our dream
Dream of freedom (dream of freedom)
Dream, that is my dream
A dream that is our dream
Dream of freedom

Dream, that is my dream
A dream that is our dream
Dream of freedom