That title may be a bit misleading; what many are protesting is the contrived impoverishment and intentional hunger imposed by U.S. sanctions, which has never forgiven Cuba for defeating their attempted coup d'état in 1961. I suspect that the $20 million we spend annually on "democracy promotion" added a touch of grease to the skids, too. Thousands march in Cuba in rare mass protests amid economic crisis
Food shortages and rising prices are fueling the protests, just as they did in the old Soviet Union. Add to that the shortage of coronavirus vaccines. And when the Soviet Union collapsed that took away a large part of Cuba's support. With the Castro brothers gone many feel it's time to end the communist regime. And yes the US sanctions hurt as well, but they've lived with those sanctions for many years. Sadly this is what happens to communist countries, eventually the system collapses on itself.
I am glad to see that such protests were not curtailed by the government. Imo, Cuba can gradually graduate to a democratic socialist nation while also providing space for capable entrepreneurs and capitalism in a regulated environment. Hopefully , due to the background of socialism, they will not make the mistake of being a sham democracy and become a plutocracy instead as some other so-called democracies have become.
If Cuba gets to the point of expanding market reforms I hope they look at Estonia and Poland for privatization examples. Both countries were able to privatize with less corruption issues. Estonia used an auction approach and Poland used a leasing approach. "McDermott believes that Poland’s unwillingness to impose mass privatization has contributed greatly to its current prosperity. Poland set up a worker leasing method instead, by which about 67% of firms were privatized. The government gave managers and employees the opportunity to lease the firms, with an option to buy over time. In order to apply for the leasing program, the firm had to have 50% approval of the employees." Czechmate, Or the Pitfalls of Rapid Privatization in Emerging Economies - Knowledge@Wharton
