Cuba protests: The economic woes driving discontent

Soaring global food prices and the island’s devalued currency — coupled with longtime shortages of basic goods — helped spark the recent demonstrations.

Cubans have taken to the streets in cities across the country over the last week, in a wave of rare public protests to express their frustration with rising prices, falling wages and the failings of the island’s long-standing communist government to address these economic challenges. Cuba’s coronavirus pandemic-ravaged economy shrank by 11 percent in 2020, the island’s economy minister said, the sharpest contraction since the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. Soaring global food prices this year and the island’s devalued currency — coupled with shortages of basic goods that predate the pandemic — have fuelled discontent. Both pro- and anti-government demonstrators have taken to the streets since Sunday.