Also, the Cuban left's role in these protests should not be understated.
Here is an article published by Cuban communists in which they condemn the government's response, support the protests, and call for the government to release those it has detained.
I have taken the liberty of translating some excerpts from the article as well as some of the comments underneath it. (Emphasis mine)
"This afternoon, the Cuban people took to the streets. A people convened not by any organization, but by the acute economic crisis that confronts Cuba and the inability of the government to manage the situation. Cuba took to the streets with the wrong slogan "Homeland and life," but it took to the streets for more than just a slogan, it took to the streets to call on the government for a true socialism.
Those who were in the streets were not just artists and intellectuals, this time it was the people in its broadest heterogeneity."
[...]
"This article is a call for the liberty of all those detained, and especially the arbitrary detainment of Frank Garcia Hernandez, historian and Cuban Marxist. For the detention of Leonardo Romero Negron, young socialist student of physics at the University of Habana. For the detainment of Maykel Gonzalez Vivero, director of "Tremenda Nota," a marginal maganize. For the detainment of Marcos Antonio Perez Fernandez, an underage pre-university student.
For all those violently detained in this black afternoon that Cuba will not forget. [We] appeal to the solidarity of the international Marxist community and also the conscience of the Cuban government. This is about a people that needs answers and dialog.
This is about a civil society that does not want annexation, but instead to participate and decide the destiny of its nation. [We] condemn the repression and say enough to the bureaucracy."
The way I read it, this last line refutes the false dichotomy that many of the people uncritically caping for the Cuban government in this thread and the American left more broadly continue to disingenuously push: it is not a choice between "defending the revolution" and "supporting American intervention." That is a bullshit false dichotomy, and I resent anyone who continues to push it.
From the comments section. I tried to capture a variety of viewpoints:
"
It may be the case that some of the protesters are commingled with the empire, but going by the pictures, the majority were young people who owe absolutely nothing to anyone, those born in the mid-80s and 90s who have only seen misery in Cuba, and who are not interested in slogans. Those reflected by Orwell in Animal Farm, the same who emigrated en masse as they saw no future. To me, the call by the President for Cubans to face each other down is a crime against humanity. There has not been a socialism in Cuba for decades, only a caste of bureaucrats who have appropriated the state and who do everything not to lose their privileged positions. It is painful to see how this little group has destroyed the economy and Cuban society.
The fault does not lie solely in the embargo, since food: yams, cassava, and beans are not imported. Besides, it is necessary to give the people political participation. The government has shown and continues to show that it is incapable of pulling Cuba out of the hole that they themselves, all of whom possess the bellies and necks of the pathologically obese, have sunk the country."
"I support the Cuban revolution, however I see that the manifestations against the governing bureaucracy are being encouraged by the NED (National Endowment for Democracy [...]). And the signals are clear: 1) the slogan of the manifestations and 2) the American flags present in the marches. Either the socialist revolutionaries expulse these mercenaries with a thrashing, or these manifestations shall have a restorationist destiny. If this does not happen, then the correct thing is to position ourselves together with the leaders of the socialist state of Cuba."
"Solidarity from a communist worker from the United States! The Cuban workers' struggle against the Cuban bureaucracy and the American workers' struggle against monopolist capitalists are one and the same."
"This much is clear: a partisan dictatorship is not a proletarian dictatorship."
