An area of the regional public sphere, both Country Email List on the left and on the right, took the absence of youth mobilizations in Cuba for granted. According to some, this absence could be explained because Cuba has the most democratic and fair Country Email List system on the continent. According to others, the lack of public demonstrations is the result of the persistence of a dictatorship that exercises absolute control over society. Both visions, which incur in Country Email List an exceptionalism very typical of the Cold War, ignore the social changes that have taken place on the island in recent decades.
From a historical point of view, it is not Country Email List strictly true that there have been no popular protests in Cuba. There were in 1980 and in 1994, and in both cases they were related to pressure from disadvantaged sectors seeking to emigrate en Country Email List masse to the United States. In recent decades there have been recurrent riots of small groups, but also massive demonstrations not called by the State, such as a march by animal Country Email List protectors and environmental activists and another against homophobia, organized by independent LGTBI groups in May 2019. This last mobilization was repressed.
On November 27, a youth protest lasting Country Email List more than 12 hours took place in Havana at the Ministry of Culture. The phenomenon was born as a "sit-in" in front of the institution and was carried out by a small group of artists and intellectuals who demanded to meet with the minister to express their discomfort at the raid on the headquarters Country Email List of the San Isidro Movement and the arrest of its members, who had held hunger and thirst strikes for several days. Very soon, the number of participants in the sit-in grew, to the point that, according to Country Email List some sources, it reached 300 people and, according to others, 600.