 A massive protest movement broke out in Cuba in July of 2021. Food, medicine and electricity shortages exacerbated by the COVID pandemic were pushing an already desperate oppressed and impoverished nation to the brink of a rebellion. Demonstrators used the internet, which has only been legally available in the country since 2018, to coordinate action in large and small cities across the island. So the Cuban government quickly arrested hundreds of protesters and shut down the internet. Video of a YouTuber being pulled out of her room in the middle of a Spanish news broadcast went viral. Cuban President Miguel Diaz Canel appeared on state TV to call for the violent suppression of the protests against counter-revolutionaries. In Miami, members of the sizeable Cuban American population plan to load their own fishing boats with supplies to make the 90-mile journey to the island themselves, but were deterred by the US Coast Guard. They set off fireworks in international waters off the coast of Cuba instead. I think what people don't understand is that the problem in Cuba stems from the fact that people can't do anything for themselves. How do you feed yourself? How do you make money? You're only allowed to make money if the government says it's okay. And that's how the government throttles people. They'll throw you in jail if you decide to try and feed your family on your own. Martha Bueno is a Cuban American activist who started the group People for Cuba following the protests. They assemble packages of dry foods and medical supplies, and then pay people $35 a pound to smuggle them onto the island. They've shipped more than 800 pounds so far, but she says it's become more difficult in recent months as the Cuban government has cracked down on smuggled supplies. The big reason that we have to smuggle it into Cuba is because if I send it legitimately through the Cuban government, if I raise thousands of dollars and send a container ship of medicine to Cuba, the Cuban government will take that and then sell it in the stores. And I wanted it to be humanitarian aid, people who needed it to be able to receive it without paying, and I especially won't help the Cuban government. I refuse to fundraise, pay for, and then give it to them so that they can sell it in the stores. I'm not that kind of girl. She certainly isn't. In one of her most popular tweets, Bueno, an outspoken libertarian, wrote, when my father was 21, he was sentenced to six years in prison for attempting to leave his country, Cuba. A year into his sentence, my fearless mother broke him out of jail. You might want to trade your freedom for safety, but I sure as hell don't. How did hearing these family stories growing up affect your political outlook and your view of current events in Cuba? How can it not affect my political views when I can contrast? I can get on an airplane here and leave and go anywhere, which I do love to travel. And every time I get on an airplane, I think about that, how that simple action of trying to leave your country landed my father with a six-year sentence. I mean, everything in my life, I can draw a parallel to what's happening in Cuba. Cuba wasn't always that way. Political decisions have led to people not having those freedoms. So of course, I'm going to defend the freedoms we have. I just, I feel like there's no other way. With the Cuban government, there are no government. There are no government. They are a mob. Danny Lugo came to America from Cuba 22 years ago and manages logistics for Bueno's operation. He says that even though the communist dictatorship has survived for 63 years, the courage and independence of Cuba's youth give him hope that change is finally coming. I think there is a new generation of Cubans or young Cubans that have not been brainwashed. So that's our hope. And we want to help those, I mean, that generation to, you know, to win the freedom. But one Cuban citizen who spoke to us anonymously for fear of retribution from the government says that the regime led by President Miguel Diaz Canal still has an ironclad grip on power and is able to quash the demonstrations at will by cutting off the internet and electricity, withholding supplies and arresting and deporting dissidents. What we saw July 11 was by far the most important, the largest, the most widespread and the most political, openly political of public demonstrations against the regime. Sebastian Arcos is the associate director of the Cuban Research Institute at Florida International University. His father was a political activist imprisoned for years by Castro. He later died of cancer after being denied treatment by the regime's politicized health care system. Arcos points to the protests last summer as a sign that the internet is eroding the state's power. It allowed the July protests to spread farther than has ever been seen under the communist regime, which he says is slowly but surely crumbling. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the regime has been slowly decomposing. This is an established process by the academic literature is known as post-totalitarian evolution, and it's an inevitable process of decomposition of the regime. The regime begins to lose the basic pillars. The first one to go was ideology. The people in the regime, they say they believe it, but they drive BMWs. They are practicing capitalism while they preach socialism or communism to the rest of the population. No one believes in them. Then Castro dies. The charismatic leader, the man who represented that path towards paradise is gone. Finally, they don't, they can't mobilize people anymore because no one believes in what they say anymore. He says that the process of reform and totalitarian communist states often involves cycles of opposition and repression. The regime is now engaged in pure naked repression. What they're trying to do is trying to rebuild the terror, the state terror that Fidel Castro successfully built in the early 60s, that they lost and people will come out into the streets again. Meanwhile, most Cubans are just looking for their next meal according to the source we spoke with. The Cuban government blames the dire situation on the trade embargo the U.S. has placed on the country. Bueno says the embargo is a scapegoat. It's not the embargo that causes Cubans to face these problems. It's the Cuban government that causes them. Cuba's an island and yet people are banned from fishing. You can't grow any food. You're not allowed to do the simplest of things. The Cuban government looks to have regained control after stopping a second protest in November. But Bueno and Arco say the status quo can't hold. I think things are changing. You see it now. You see people actually questioning the Cuban government. I really believe that that's going to lead a change, that cryptocurrencies, the ability to go outside the government for money is going to be a game changer. Every time they arrest a 60-year-old and they sentence someone to 25 years in jail, they are creating entire families and neighborhoods of opponents. So they are feeding the opposition. This is not the El Castro's classic totalitarian regime of the 60s and 70s. It's a completely different animal. It's weak. It has been wounded. If Raul Castro dies and is buried, that we will see fractions within the Communist Party. Some people will refuse to repress the population in the streets. That is how the Czechoslovakian Communist Party and the Communist Party in East Germany collapse. That is exactly how they collapse.