Nosotras queremos libertad!

So, they cried, in an open demonstration in Cuba on July 11.

Cuba is not only having riots, but semi violent riots. The Communist government has promised to do whatever it takes to put them down.  Reportedly, a couple of people have been shot.

A crippled economy, and a COVID-19 fueled healthcare crisis, have brought about the immediate crisis, but 60 years of communist rule haven't helped, to say the least.  It's time for Cuba to close that chapter of its history and start a new one.

And it would be a new one, the new one that a lot of Cubans thought they were getting in 1959 when Castro deposed the Batista regime.  Castro had not campaigned against the government as a Communist, although suspicions existed.  The suspicions were uncertain enough that the United States, which had backed Batista during the war, but also quietly supplied some funds to Castro's movement, recognized his government and made some initial attempts to be friendly to it.  Only after it declared itself to be Communist did the rupture occur.

But that rupture was nearly complete.  Only funding from the Soviet Union kept Cuba going during the Cold War, in exchange for which Cuba supplied proxy troops to the Soviet backed effort in Angola during the 70s and 80s. The demise of the USSR dried up direct support of the Cuban economy, and it's limped by on what remains of its infrastructure since that time.  Only 90 miles from the United States, its economy would prosper if opened up, and that won't fully occur without the country's politics also opening up.

Cuba before Castro was corrupt.  Cuba during Castro's regime featured repression, economic stagnation, but a rooting out of the pre-revolution form of corruption.  The country is ready to step into the promise that has always existed for it.