What Can We Learn From Cuba’s Protests?

Chances are, you’ve seen footage, photos, and media coverage of Cuban dissidents protesting their government over the last four days.

Here’s a quick history refresher to set the scene: Cuba has been under communist rule since Fidel Castro led a bloody revolution and took power as Prime Minister in 1959.

Since then, the country’s once-vibrant economy has been driven into the ground by Marxism and all its hallmarks: poverty, resource scarcity, corruption, and persecution… especially for those who dare to publicly oppose their rulers.

This is why today’s protests are such a huge deal: past anti-communist movements in Cuba have been quickly reined in by arrests and crackdowns. But today, people are risking their lives to stand up in record numbers. Their authorities no longer have the muscle to keep them down.

Big Tech and the media are claiming that the pushback is all about vaccines, as this Twitter “news alert” would have you believe….

But these protests are about freedom, full stop.

Don’t take it from me. Take it from the protestors themselves, who are spraying “No mas comunisma” in their graffiti.

Take it from the anti-government YouTuber who was detained by Cuban authorities during a live interview.

Or take it directly from the Cuban government, which has been shutting down the internet across the country to prevent social media organizing.

So what can we do?

For starters, we can end the trade embargoes that are working as a chokehold against the Cuban people. Just because a foregin government is trampling on the economic liberties of its own people, doesn’t mean we have to do the same. The answer to tyranny is never more tyranny.

It’s time our blockade goes down, so Cubans can experience capitalism and all of its benefits. Withholding technology, medicine, and free trade is no way to support our fellow freedom fighters.

But ending the embargo isn’t the only thing we need to do. As believers in liberty, we must stand up for the truth in our own country. Doing so starts at home, with our own children.

Just a couple weeks ago, I wrote about kid’s books painting Fidel Castro and Che Guevara as peaceful dignitaries. Meanwhile, American socialists AOC and Bernie Sanders have skyrocketing favorability among Gen Z — our youngest and most liberal voting generation. We can’t afford to wait this out, folks. The time to start having these conversations was yesterday.

The Tuttle Twins series is packed full of stories and lessons with the power to safeguard our kids from falling for socialism. Each of our books carries the message that individual liberty—not big government—holds the answers to the problems we face.

Hope for the future isn’t lost, and these Cuban protesters are living proof. But we’d be foolish to think our country could never have the same fate.

It’s not time to kick back and watch: it’s time to join the fight for human liberty, and ensure it for our children and future generations.

Let’s get to talking, reading, and tearing down barriers…

— Connor