During Sunday’s historic nationwide protests in Cuba — the largest since 1994 — people of all ages amassed on the streets in multiple cities across the island. Thousands shouted demands for liberty and better access to vaccines and basic supplies.
The protests coincided with internet outages across the country, which many observers assumed were part of a censorship blackout.
Cubans are used to chronically bad internet services. Outages on Christmas, Valentine’s Day, and New Year’s Eve are almost scheduled events when the island’s poor connectivity is saturated with traffic. More politically sensitive instances, like the San Isidro Movement protests in late 2020, also saw internet outages, but these were far more limited in scope and length than the current spate.
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