The Cuban government has summoned the US ambassador, Benjamin Ziff, to its foreign ministry, accusing Washington of stoking a protest which saw hundreds of people take to the streets in the island’s second city of Santiago de Cuba.
The demonstration late on Sunday was a rare public show of disenchantment against Cuba’s communist government, and was apparently led by parents struggling to feed their children in the face of a worsening food crisis. The protesters reportedly chanted: “Without electricity and food, the people get hot.”
Power cuts of up to 18 hours a day have meant that as the island heads into summer it is almost impossible to preserve what little food there is.
Sunday’s protests reportedly began when mothers turned up at a government building complaining they could not provide for their children, chanting: “We are hungry.”
Similar protests broke out in El Cobre and Bayamo, while smaller groups gathered in Santa Marta, near the Varadero beach resort, and in the city of Matanzas.
The US embassy in Cuba tweeted: “We urge the Cuban government to respect the human rights of the protestors and address the legitimate needs of the Cuban people.”
But a US state department spokesman said it was “absurd” to suggest Washington was behind the protests.
Cuba is in the grip of an economic slump, worsened by soaring inflation and the sense of an increasing divide between rich and poor. The state-run bodegas where Cubans traditionally receive their rations of staples such as rice, beans, salt, sugar, coffee and, crucially, baby milk, are increasingly empty. Meanwhile, small shops have popped up across the island after small and medium-sized private enterprises were allowed to open in an effort to ease the shortages.
But with state salaries now as low as $10 a month when measured agai
