Florida state Rep. Danny Perez, a first-generation American whose parents fled Cuba, insisted on Newsmax that the protests growing on the streets there are not about COVID relief, but about the "human rights of the people of Cuba."
"The population of Cuba is sick and tired of the 62 years of communism they have to live under, where many generations of that believe for a better life,'' the 116th House District Republican said Monday on Newsmax's "National Report." "What we're seeing right now in Cuba is something that has never been done in the 62 years of this communist regime. People are out in the streets and they are tired, and they are no longer willing to wait for a change that is going to be given to them by the communist regime. They have taken it into their own hands."
The protests aren't just happening in Havana, but in different parts of the island, he continued.
"What we're seeing right now, the closest thing we've had to this was in the mid-'90s," he said. "That was where people would go on the Malecon, which is the ocean side, and there were protests and we saw an exodus of people from Cuba coming to the United States after that," Perez said. "But the extent [of] what we're seeing right now has ever been seen before."
He continued that social media has played a part in the growth of the protests, which have been coming for decades.
"What has been happening in Cuba since 1959 is finally on the main stage," Perez said. "It is time for the international community to realize what's been happening in Cuba for decades, for almost a century. Because of social media, we are able to transmit videos with just the touch of a button. Some of these videos haven't even gone viral enough."
He said he's seen some videos where policemen masquerading as civilians are being dropped off in certain communities to "make it seem as though civilians are back in the communist regime.
"We would have never seen that if it wasn't for technology and the videos that Cubans today are filming and showing the rest of the international community begging for help," Perez said. "Let's not forget, the frustration of the Cuban people have had has been there from day one, but we were fooled in 1959, and we've been trying to take back our country. And the time is now."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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