Remembering el Maleconazo
Thirty years ago hundreds of Cubans rushed to Havana's Malecon, desperate to escape the misery and repression of post-revolutionary Cuba, triggering what became known Balsero Crisis.
I couldn’t let this week end without taking a look back at 5 August 1994, the day of el Maleconazo. It was the first large-scale anti-government protests of the post revolution.
As I flipped through my memories of that event—I was a new mother living in Massachusetts but very much tied to my native Cuba and the family that we had left behind—I realized it was the first time a headline landed in our kitchen, sat down at the table, and made us pay attention.
Our family would end up with skin in the game in the wake of el Maleconazo. My cousin, a free spirited 17-year-old artist, would turn out to be one of the rafters in the so-called 1994 Balsero Crisis, when 30,000 Cubans took to the sea to escape the repression and misery of post-revolutionary Cuba.
Through his travails, my cousin brought to life for us—by then in New England and finally comfortable in our new American lives—what Castro had euphemistically had named “A Special Period in a Time of Peace,” or el periodo especial. The memories of my cousin’s plight came back this Monday as I listened and read news in Spanish from my favorite non regime-approved sources: 14ymedio (Cafecito Informativo podcast) and Diario de Cuba (Cuba a Diario podcast).
As often happens on anniversaries of events the Cuban regime would rather forget, key activists and independent journalists in Cuba awoke Monday with no internet access. Yoani Sánchez reported having a secret police agent stationed at the entrance of her building—again.
For Cuba’s 65-year-old regime, the 30th anniversary of el Maleconazo certainly falls into the “let’s bury this in a memory hole” category. So, in case any pro-democracy dissidents or writers got any ideas, “connectivity issues” and agents posted here and there were the specials on the dictatorship’s menu.
Dutch photographer Karel Poort wasn’t about to forget this anniversary. He shared this week with the Spanish news group EFE his first ever interview about what he witnessed during that day. He was on vacation, showering in his hotel room, when he heard the tumult on the street. Soon he was rushing, Nikon F301 in hand, to keep up with the marchers. He captured what would become iconic images of the historic event—this was pre-cell phone and the regime-approved foreign correspondents were probably kept as far away from the protests as possible.
Poort didn’t know that there’d been mounting tension in the country. Cuba was in the midst of el periodo especial, the years after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, which suddenly stopped pouring $4 billion a year in subsidies into Cuba. Almost overnight, everything seemed to disappear from shelves. There was no gasoline. Rolling power outages were implemented. Food rations were cut.
And the previous month, on July 13th, a large group of Cubans had attempted to escape the island on el 13 de Marzo tugboat from Havana Harbor. At least 35 people drowned that night. Survivors said the Cuban Coast Guard had rammed and sunk their boat, despite their pleas and warnings that there were children on board. The Cuban government denied the accusation, commending the officers in charge for their heroism. Some of the survivors were arrested and forced to retract their stories.
By 5 August, the day of el Maleconazo, rumors had been spreading that people were escaping the country on boats near the Malecon. Crowds gathered in the heat of that Cuban August day, moving through the streets almost like a single living organism, shouting out in desperation.
As he approached the Malecon, the esplanade that traces Havana’s coastline, Poort said he heard “full-throated cries of “Cuba sí, Castro no!,” and “¡Libertad!” When he arrived, he remembers someone telling him, “Keep taking photos and show your country the disaster we have here.”
He recalled that “plainclothes police arrived in at the hotel Deauville and started shooting wildly into the crowds.” He snapped pictures of that as well. When police tried to arrest him and take his equipment, Poort managed to break free and return to his hotel.
The unarmed protestors were quickly vanquished by police, military troops, and security agents, who beat and shot at them. The regime demonstrated that day it had no problem shooting unarmed civilians who’d turned counter revolutionary.
And it would prove it again in the years ahead, as Cuba’s unelected leader, Miguel Díaz Canel, did during the mass protests of July 11, 2021, known as 11J in Cuba. In the midst of those overwhelmingly peaceful country-wide protests, he went on state-run television and told demonstrators that “They would have to pass over our dead bodies if they want to confront the revolution and we are willing to resort to anything.” And he demanded that loyal revolutionaries take to the street to “combat” the demonstrators, essentially inciting civil war.
One week after el Maleconazo, on 12 August 1994, Castro announced that anyone who wanted to could leave Cuba by sea without an exit permit—a regulation that had been put into place after the revolution. Prior to the revolution, Cubans could travel freely within and outside of the country.
30,000 Cubans took Castro up on his offer and fled on rafts, makeshift boats, anything that remotely seaworthy. My 17-year-old cousin was on one of those rafts. Below are photos of artwork he created while he was held on the US naval base in Guantanmo, Cuba. And here is a commentary I did for NPR’s All Things Considered about what I call refugee guilt, and how his experience still haunts me.
My cousin never made it to the US. One day, months after he’d been rescued at sea, the guards on the base lowered the fences and cleared a path through the minefield that surrounds the compound. He left, along with a group of others, and headed home. He’d never been away from his family before. He’d spent months by then waiting for word that he’d be allowed into the US. The day he walked through the cleared field, his last drop of hope had dried up.
The hardship and repression have only worsened for Cubans, who are enduring privations that many say are worse than those of the Special Period: severe food and gas shortages, rolling power outages, reduced rations, increased repression, and—with a mass exodus underway—more than 10% of the population—fewer family and friends who can help.
More than 1000 documented Cuban political prisoners are being punished for thinking differently than the regime, and daring to express themselves.
How much longer will this go on? The Venezuelan people, whose military and secret police have been trained by Cubans, just tried to answer that question at the polls. But tyranny doesn’t give up without a brutal fight.
I keep thinking of that great song by the Rascals, People Got to be Free. Not all will have the courage to stand up and speak out, but those who do will inspire others—and not just in Cuba. It’s the same empowered spirit that exploded into el Maleconazo and 11J—and so many others: the Arab Spring, Belarusian Uprising, Iranian uprisings of 2009 and 2022, Ukrainian Maidan Uprising, and in the Ukrainian people as they say hell no to Putin, right now.
It’s a courage that keeps Maduro and the Cuban regime alert and fearful. That’s why they post their agents at dissidents’ and reporters’ doors, cut off their internet, take their belongings, raid their homes, threaten their families.
That’s how afraid they are and—somehow—that gives me hope.
