Over the course of 12 days, DailyMail.com met a cross-section of Cubans to assess the factors behind the violent revolt on July 11 and 12.
The goal was to discover what the future might hold for a people trapped between a severe economic blockade and a repressive undemocratic regime.
DailyMail.com entered the country posing as tourists and toured the capital's crumbling colonial streets, where soldiers and black berets stood guard on almost every corner.
Shops had long lines of people outside in the 95 degree heat, desperate for medicine or food, but the shelves were usually all but bare.
Yet while its people struggle to eat, the government prioritizes growing food for export and bringing in hard currency from the tourist market.
We spoke with Cubans from all walks of life, including a doctor, tour guide and tennis coach, to hear their stories.
DailyMail.com met a large cross-section of Cubans to assess the factors behind the revolt on July 11 and 12. Shops had long lines of people outside in the 95 degree heat, desperate for medicine or food, but the shelves were usually all but bare
DailyMail.com entered the country posing as tourists and toured the capital's crumbling colonial streets, where soldiers and black berets stood guard on almost every corner
A woman is seen weeping on the streets of Havana as she finds the conditions unbearable
The medic banned from seeing patients
Doctor Ernesto Chavez Perez, 51, is a qualified GP and ICU specialist with 26 years experience. But now he is forced to live hand to mouth because of a Kafkaesque set of regulations designed to prevent the emigration of highly-trained professionals from leaving the island - known as the 'brain drain'.
Doctor Ernesto Chavez Perez, 51, is a qualified GP and ICU specialist with 26 years experience. But now he is forced to live hand to mouth because of a Kafkaesque set of regulations designed to prevent the 'brain drain'
Despite the soaring Covid rates in Cuba, he is banned from practicing as a doctor because of his request to leave the country in 2012.
Doctors only earn around $120 a month in the country.
Before he was allowed to leave, Ernesto had to serve a 'penalty period' of five years, during which he was inexplicably prohibited from seeing patients. To make ends meet, he did what most Cubans have to, and scraped a living buying and selling basic products on the black market.
After that, he traveled to Ecuador for two years, and then to Panama and worked there for a year, though these jobs were on Cuban government business, so they kept the vast majority of his much larger salary.
The father-of-four told DailyMail.com: 'In 2012 Raul Castro brought in a law that allowed professionals to find jobs outside Cuba, but in the case of health workers, we were told that while we wait five years for authorization to leave, we cannot practice medicine.
'It was designed as a deterrent to stop doctors from leaving Cuba, which has the best health system in Latin America. I just had to buy and sell things when I could, and also rented out a room in my house to bring in extra income.'
In 2020, Ernesto returned to Cuba to care for his 84-year-old mother and found himself trapped by the pandemic lockdown. But incredibly, despite his vital skills, if he tried to resume working in Cuba now – even temporarily – his five-year medicine ban would start again.
The father-of-four (pictured with his family) told DailyMail.com: 'In 2012 Raul Castro brought in a law that allowed professionals to find jobs outside Cuba, but in the case of health workers, we were told that while we wait five years for authorization to leave, we cannot practice medicine'
Ernesto's government-enforced 'non-doctor' status also means he's at the back of the line when it comes to Covid vaccines, and he still has not received his first shot
'I feel so bad that I'm not allowed to be a doctor here anymore – especially right now. My doctor friends tell me that the situation is very bad with Covid in some parts of the country.
'They only have only basic resources. Cuba had to develop its own pulmonary ventilators which people need and they have nowhere near enough to be able to cope. Even the Navy hospital, which is the biggest and best in Cuba, only has the capacity to ventilate about 20 patients.
'The vaccination program has been slow, but remember we had to make our own vaccine and we have not imported any at all.
'I am helping my neighbors when they ask me for medical advice, but I have no drugs to give them. All I can do is make suggestions as to where they should go, or use natural medicines which I learned to use when I was in the Army.'
Ernesto's government-enforced 'non-doctor' status also means he's at the back of the line when it comes to Covid vaccines, and he still has not received his first shot of the three home-produced Abdala vaccines, which Cuba is giving its citizens.
'My brother and sister are in the United States, so that is where I would like to go. I'm a believer and I hope it will be possible for my children to develop their lives here, otherwise I would do everything in my power to get them out of the country. '
His four children have succeeded despite the hardships of Havana, with his elder daughter Christina, 28, achieving a doctorate in mathematics at Havana University after also studying in Paris. His sons Ernesto, 25, and 21-year-old David, are a painter and medical student respectively, and their sister Daniella, 15, is still at school.
As for the protests, while he understands the feelings of those who went onto the streets, he disagrees with their methods. 'That kind of violence will change nothing,' he said. 'The only answer for Cuba is that other countries will help us and that the blockade is lifted.'
The rebel tennis coach
Rodney Rivery Lopez, 36, a tennis coach, took to the streets to voice his objections to the government
One of those who took to the streets to voice his objections to the government was Rodney Rivery Lopez, 36, a tennis coach. He has also posted a series of hard-hitting denunciations of the regime and its black-clad bully boys on Facebook.
While Rodney has never been arrested, he says he knows he is on a government watch list, as employers have frequently let him go, telling him apologetically after only a few weeks that they had no choice following a call from the authorities.
His crime? To post on Facebook messages such as this one on the day of the protests: 'I'm back, killer henchmen… they may block my words, but never my ideals… long live freedom… damn, this starts now!'
Rodney joined the march on the Capitol Building in the center of Havana, an exact replica -only a little taller – of its counterpart in Washington DC.
'It will happen again and I believe it is the beginning of the end of the Communist system,' he said.
'The objective of the Communists is to keep the people down and in misery.
'There are many reasons why the people have taken to the streets – it's the first time in Cuba's history, but it's only a surprise it has taken this long.
'The government says the trouble was all because of meddling by the Americans, but that is just not true – Cuba is starving and people cannot take any more.
Rivery Lopez says he's been blacklisted from jobs for speaking out against the regime on Facebook
'We cannot get basic food here, because the government makes sure it is exported for hard currency. My mother lives in Miami and she sends me screenshots of basic things like yogurt that she can buy there which are produced in Cuba but which are not available to me, even if I was paying in dollars. '
'My mother left three years ago, first for Spain and then moved to Miami, but she couldn't take me with her. She was allowed to take my sister who is a lot younger than me, and one day I hope to join her.'
He adds: 'The system is broken – it's a combination of factors: Trump re-imposing the blockade, Covid cutting off the tourist flights and the cruise ships. Some parts of Cuba have suffered electricity blackouts lasting eight to 16 hours a day.
'I'm not right wing or left wing, I just believe in freedom. One of those freedoms is for people to have the basic necessities of life: food and medicine, and we are being denied that now. The government has given us 60 years of the same s**t – Trump cut us off at the knees and Covid has made things worse.'
The anonymous critic
Another critic, who is placed much closer to the government, spoke candidly, repeating a well-worn maxim about the inefficiency of the Marxist economy: 'The Communist government gives us everything, but we have nothing; the capitalist governments give their people nothing but they have everything.'
He was not surprised at the events of July 11, and expects repeat performances.
'People at the bottom have been left in misery under the Communist system for a long time – it was only a matter of time before people said 'enough' and rose up in the way they did earlier this month.
'Our agriculture is a mess, even
