When Fidel Castro died five years ago, an aging regime entered an aging administrative phase due to the iron constitution of the tough brother Raúl Castro. Not many contemporaries should have noticed at the time, because with the disappearance of the only eye-catcher in the political life of the island state, pathos and charisma had also disappeared: Cuba became boring, the Che Guevara exoticism vanished. However, it became even quieter with the guardians of the Grail of the Revolution when the shadowy brother of the former "Comandante" resigned three years ago and transferred the presidency to the now sixty-one year old Miguel Díaz-Canel: Now there was nothing left that sparkled Caribbean socialism let, not even the family name of Comrade Fidel,who, with his seemingly biblical longevity, had shaped generations of Cubans and survived countless oppositionists.

Paul Ingendaay

Europe correspondent for the feature pages in Berlin.

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Then came the corona pandemic.

And it was too much for the rotten structure of this state.

The lack of tourism finally brought the ailing economy to its knees, which was not helped by the hesitant privatization after Fidel's withdrawal.

A third wave of the pandemic swept across the country, growing dissatisfaction and frustration.

In three years, the new president, whose name hardly anyone outside of Cuba knows, had not managed to reveal a hint of openness.

The further the young generation moved away from the 1959 revolution, the less their slogans were still useful as a political appeal.

It was not just artists, intellectuals and dissidents who marched in protest demonstrations in different parts of the country ten days ago, but also many young people who are simply calling for a better life. And it is no coincidence that they sing the song “Patria y vida” (Fatherland and Life) by the Cuban rapper Yotuel, which has been clicked a million times. The title is a direct challenge, and it has long been sung in the exiled circles of Miami and Madrid. Because it is the reverse of the revolutionary slogan "Patria o muerte" (Fatherland or Death), which Fidel Castro had minted on coins over sixty years ago after the fall of the Batista regime and painted meter-large on Havana's house facades. Patriotism, it was called at the time, should be paired with extreme courage to die. The new generation of protestswhich has caused the largest demonstrations in the last few decades, definitely wants nothing more to do with it.

The writer Ángel Santiesteban and his wife, the journalist Camila Acosta, also attended the march in Havana ten days ago. They saw how the Cuban security forces reacted to the uprising with batons and arrests. You can watch shaky videos online showing thugs jumping from open trucks to stifle peaceful protest with violence. The next day, Camila Acosta, who worked for the Spanish daily ABC, was arrested and Santiesteban was forced to go into hiding. The multiple award-winning author and operator of the dissident blog "Los hijos que nadie quiso" (The children nobody wanted) has every reason to fear his life: In the last ten years the state hasthen the ostracized author was put under pressure with constructed criminal processes and then sentenced to five years in prison, of which he had to serve two and a half years. Since then, Santiesteban, born in 1966, has remained a visible troublemaker: a man who doesn't shut up and takes risks in return - and who doesn't want to leave the island under any circumstances.