{"id":22143,"date":"2025-06-10T12:55:02","date_gmt":"2025-06-10T12:55:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/uit-ci.org\/?p=22143"},"modified":"2025-06-10T12:55:02","modified_gmt":"2025-06-10T12:55:02","slug":"cuba-university-students-begin-strike-in-rejection-of-internet-rate-hike","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/uit-ci.org\/index.php\/2025\/06\/10\/cuba-university-students-begin-strike-in-rejection-of-internet-rate-hike\/?lang=en","title":{"rendered":"Cuba: University students begin strike in rejection of internet rate hike"},"content":{"rendered":"
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By IWU-FI<\/i><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/i><\/div>\n
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0A large student protest has begun in Cuba and is spreading in the form of a student strike. The discontent is in response to the measure taken by the telecommunications company\u00a0ETECSA (Telecommunications Company of Cuba S.A.<\/i>), which involves the partial dollarisation of the service and a severe increase in the already high costs.<\/div>\n

The measure, promoted by students at the Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science and the Faculty of Philosophy, History and Sociology at the University of Havana, was supported by the Faculty of Audiovisual Media Arts (FAMCA<\/i>) at the University of the Arts (ISA<\/i>).
\nCuba’s one-party regime has come out to deny that there are any protests and that these are \u2018foreign\u2019 versions. But the reality is different.
\nIn the last few hours, the Faculty of Communication and Literature of the University of Holguin has also spoken out and called for\u00a0\u00aban indefinite academic strike from June 7th and until the measures are revoked<\/i>\u00ab. \u00abWe are not a privileged minority, we are the voice of a people tired of paying for inefficiency<\/i>\u00ab, they argued in their statement.
\nAt the same time, mathematics and computer science students reaffirmed their decision in an assembly\u00a0to maintain the teachers’ strike in protest at\u00a0ETECSA<\/i>‘s measures, describing them as \u00aba direct aggression against the Cuban people<\/i>\u00ab. \u00abWe are mobilising for social justice, not for crumbs<\/i>\u00ab, they wrote.
\nThe Faculty of Biology publicly denied the authority of the national president of the\u00a0FEU<\/i>, Ricardo Rodr\u00edguez Gonz\u00e1lez, whom they accused of not representing the real opinions of the student body. The Faculty of Philosophy, History, Sociology and Social Work demanded his immediate resignation, describing his administration as \u00abconformist, passive and uncritical<\/i>\u00ab. (Quotes from CiberCuba editorial office, 5\/6\/2025)
\nThe university students, as part of the Cuban working people, are fed up with the governments\u00a0economic adjustments that talks about \u2018socialism\u2019 but has restored capitalism.<\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0The fundamental cause of the social unrest and the university protests has to do with the fact that, for more than 30 years, the Cuban regime has been opening up the economy to private foreign investment, especially to big transnationals in tourism and other sectors of the economy, thus restoring capitalist exploitation in Cuba.<\/div>\n

Many still believe that Cuba is a socialist country, but it is no longer the case any more. There is no socialism in Cuba. It is a repressive one-party regime which, like China, rules for the nouveau riche and their alliances with the multinationals. The economy is dominated by the so-called ‘mixed enterprises’, where the Cuban government is associated with the multinationals and allows people to work for wages of 20 to 100 dollars.
\nFrom the\u00a0IWU-FI<\/i>, we stand in solidarity with the student protest in Cuba, and defend the right to protest and strike and warn against any attempt of repression by the government.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n
The historic tariff slashing of the telephone monopoly in Cuba<\/b><\/i>
\nStatement by the collective \u2018Socialists in Struggle\u2019<\/i><\/div>\n
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0On the morning of the 30th of May, 2025, the Cuban people woke up to the news of the disproportionate increase in the price of mobile telephony access. The measure was applied without prior announcement by business authorities and government officials. With the drastic modifications, the company is in breach of point seven of the prepaid mobile phone service contract, which states: \u00abETECSA will inform the client, thirty (30) calendar days in advance, of any modification in the conditions of service provision<\/i>\u00ab. In this way, the company violates the contractual commitment established with the country’s consumers, which constitutes a legal violation of national scope.<\/div>\n

ETECSA<\/i>\u00a0went from offering a minimum Internet access at a price of 110 Cuban pesos, to offering the most demanding option, an extra bag of 11,760 pesos in national currency, which represents a difference of more than 10,000%, equivalent to multiplying the costs by a factor of 100 at its maximum. The company also reduces access to 6 gigabytes per month in the first bag of use, while it is promoting the expansion of extra bags priced from 3,360 Cuban pesos, equivalent to 1.6 times the minimum wage, or 2.2 basic pensions for a retired person.<\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0This new outrage aims to compress the average consumption of the population, in order to encourage payment in dollars through international recharges or remittances. In the midst of such a complex scenario, with daily power outages that exceed 22 hours in communities in the interior of the country, Internet access is not only a legitimate entertainment option; it also represents an important mechanism for work, access to information sources and a communication channel on an island suffering from a sustained migratory exodus (close to two million inhabitants between 2020-2025). For these reasons, this measure also affects the economy of family members living abroad, who face the challenges of migration in a global context that is increasingly hostile to those who have this status.<\/div>\n

This latest package adds to the concert of anti-popular measures with neoliberal overtones promoted by the highest leadership of the\u00a0Cuban Communist Party<\/i>\u00a0(PCC<\/i>). The government ratifies its will to promote economic extractivism of a rentier nature, instead of strengthening the productive capacities of the national industry, in a way that leads to the valorisation of employment and its reflection in the wages of the workers. The popular revolutionary solution against an impoverishing and authoritarian regime is the road to the re-establishment of justice and the well-being of the Cuban people.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By IWU-FI \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0A large student protest has begun in Cuba and is spreading in the form of a student strike. The discontent is in response to the measure taken by the telecommunications company\u00a0ETECSA (Telecommunications Company of Cuba S.A.), which involves the partial dollarisation of the service and a severe increase in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":22044,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/uit-ci.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22143"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/uit-ci.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/uit-ci.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uit-ci.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uit-ci.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22143"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/uit-ci.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22143\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22144,"href":"https:\/\/uit-ci.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22143\/revisions\/22144"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uit-ci.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22044"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/uit-ci.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uit-ci.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uit-ci.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}