---
title: Cuba's crisis years:Mariel, the Special Period, the Malecón, and 11 July
url: https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/cuba-crisis-years/
description: in four crises since 1980 the Cuban government, speaking in its own name, framed shortage and protest as a test of revolutionary belonging and as the…
section: Case studies
---

![Illustration: a Cold War intelligence-dossier collage dominated by a distressed world map with connecting routes, coordinates and highlighted regions.](https://propagandaarchive.org/static/generated/detail/hero-map-heavy.jpg)

[Case studies](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/)

# Cuba's crisis years:Mariel, the Special Period, the Malecón, and 11 July

At a glance

In four crises since 1980 the Cuban government, speaking in its own name, framed shortage and protest as a test of revolutionary belonging and as the work of an outside hand or a residue of "antisocial" people…

- **When:** April 20, 1980
- **Actor:** Government of Cuba under Fidel Castro and, for 2021, Miguel Díaz-Canel, through speeches, Granma,…
- **Target:** Cuban domestic public; secondarily, foreign governments and press
- **Source:** Identified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they are
- **Confidence:** **documented** Primary documents, court records, official disclosures
- **Techniques:** [Name-calling](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/name-calling/) [Identity fusion](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/identity-fusion/) [Euphemism / doublespeak](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/euphemism/) [Scapegoating](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/scapegoating/) [Card stacking](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/card-stacking/)

Full details

- **Actor:** Government of Cuba under Fidel Castro and, for 2021, Miguel Díaz-Canel, through speeches, Granma, national television, the Interior Ministry and the Ministry of Communications

On this page

- [What happened](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/cuba-crisis-years/#what-happened)
- [How it works](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/cuba-crisis-years/#how-it-works)
- [Then and now](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/cuba-crisis-years/#then-and-now)
- [Positions on the record](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/cuba-crisis-years/#positions-on-the-record)
- [Same-method test](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/cuba-crisis-years/#same-method-test)
- [How to spot it](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/cuba-crisis-years/#how-to-spot-it)
- [Images](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/cuba-crisis-years/#images)
- [Sources](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/cuba-crisis-years/#sources)

On this page

> **Content note.** This page quotes official labels for people who left or protested ("lumpen", "antisocial elements", "delinquent") and a label the Interior Ministry attached to a man it confirmed dead. The labels are evidence of the method. They are not this archive's description of anyone.

**In one line:** in four crises since 1980 the Cuban government, speaking in its own name, framed shortage and protest as a test of revolutionary belonging and as the work of an outside hand or a residue of "antisocial" people; the government that used those frames had not fallen by the latest official text opened for this page.

![Diagram: four frames side by side, Mariel, the Special Period, the Malecón and 11 July, with no arrow toward a collapse. Disputed tolls and crowd sizes are marked as not settled](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/images/cuba-crisis-years-diagram.svg)

The slogans *Granma* printed for 1 May 1980, and the chant "¡Abajo la escoria!" at that rally, are quoted on [The Cuba-United States radio war: Radio Swan's cover story and Havana's 'gusanos'](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/cuba-us-radio-war/). They are not repeated here.

## What happened

**Mariel, April–May 1980**

- **The embassy and the guard.** In his 1 May 1980 speech in the Plaza de la Revolución, Fidel Castro said patience ended with the death of the soldier Ortiz Cabrera, and "Sencillamente le retiramos la custodia a la embajada y nosotros sabíamos lo que iba a pasar" ("We simply withdrew the guard from the embassy, and we knew what was going to happen"). He said that once the "lumpen" knew there was no guard, the Peruvian embassy would fill, and that it did. A U.S. Public Health Service article later put the embassy figure at 10,000 people seeking asylum (Silver et al., *Public Health Reports*, 1985).
- **Who opened the port.** The same article says Castro formally announced on 20 April 1980 that the port of Mariel was open to anyone wishing to emigrate to the United States, and that 124,769 Cubans landed in Florida between 21 April and 26 September 1980, 111,779 of them in the first seven weeks. On 1 May, Castro gave a different emphasis: "esta vez no fuimos nosotros los que tomamos la iniciativa de abrir Mariel, no, la iniciativa la tomaron de allá" ("this time it was not we who took the initiative of opening Mariel; no, the initiative was taken from over there"). He said boats had come from Florida to collect "this lumpen", and that Cuba had limited itself to saying it would not receive them "a cañonazos" ("with cannon fire") because they were not coming as an act of war. Both accounts are on the record. This page does not pick one as the whole story.

![Harbour at Key West with a long pier, small boats and shrimp trawlers moored along it under a grey sky](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/images/cuba-crisis-years-mariel-pier-b-key-west-1980.jpg)

*Boats and people at Pier B, Truman Annex, Key West, Florida, during the Mariel boatlift, 1980. Photograph by Raymond L. Blazevic, Florida Keys Public Libraries, via Wikimedia Commons; CC BY 2.0.*

- **A new line, not the slogans already filed.** The 1 May speech also said: "Quien no tenga genes revolucionarios, quien no tenga sangre revolucionaria, quien no tenga una mente que se adapte a la idea de una revolución, quien no tenga un corazón que se adapte al esfuerzo y al heroísmo de una revolución, no lo necesitamos en nuestro país" ("Whoever does not have revolutionary genes, whoever does not have revolutionary blood, whoever does not have a mind that adapts to the idea of a revolution, whoever does not have a heart that adapts to the effort and the heroism of a revolution, we do not need that person in our country"). He said the slogan being carried out was that anyone who wished to leave for a country that would receive them should go. He treated reports of "delincuentes" among those leaving as unsurprising, and said the great majority of people at the Peruvian embassy had been "lumpen". He did not, in the passages opened here, give a count of prisoners.
- **What the U.S. health authors counted, and what they did not.** Silver et al. wrote that the great majority were physically and mentally healthy, that some entrants were reported to have been taken from psychiatric hospitals, jails or prisons, and that Cuban officials at Mariel were reported to have moved families aside to make room for people brought by the government. The article says about 2,000 were unaccompanied minors. It does not publish a census of people with criminal records. How large that share was is not settled here. The labels and the state-drafted signs for the acts of repudiation are on [The Cuba-United States radio war: Radio Swan's cover story and Havana's 'gusanos'](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/cuba-us-radio-war/).

![Close-up of an elderly man with his eyes closed, wiping one eye with a cloth held in his hand](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/images/cuba-crisis-years-mariel-refugee-arrival-key-west-1980.jpg)

*A Cuban man wipes his eye with a cloth on arrival in Key West during the Mariel boatlift, 1980. Dale M. McDonald Collection, State Archives of Florida (Florida Memory), via Wikimedia Commons; public domain (Florida state-government work).*

**The Special Period after 1989**

- **A wartime category, moved into peacetime.** On 28 January 1990, closing the 16th congress of the CTC, Castro said the country had plans for a total blockade, "período especial en tiempo de guerra" ("special period in time of war"), and now had to plan for "período especial en tiempo de paz". He defined it: problems with Eastern Europe, or "determinados factores o procesos en la Unión Soviética", could become so serious that Cuba would face "una situación de abastecimiento sumamente difícil" ("a very difficult supply situation"). He said all fuel came from the USSR and might fall by a third, by half, or "incluso que se redujera a cero" ("even that it might be reduced to zero"). He told the hall the revolution would not fall and socialism would not fall in Cuba, and he closed with both "¡Socialismo o Muerte!" and "¡Patria o Muerte!".
- **7 March 1990.** Closing the Federation of Cuban Women congress, he said "No estamos en período especial, pero estamos casi casi en período especial" ("We are not in the special period, but we are very nearly in the special period"). He tied the phrase to a loss of Soviet supplies, including energy, in a country whose level of development he put at a consumption of 12 million tonnes of oil, and he listed what to do with 10, 8, 6, 5 or 4 million. In that period, he said, social development would have to stop entirely: schools, day-care centres, clinics, housing. "Si estamos cinco años sin construir una vivienda, bueno, si ese es el precio de salvar la Revolución, estamos cinco años sin hacerla" ("If we spend five years without building a home, well, if that is the price of saving the Revolution, we will spend five years without building one"). He said electrical use might have to fall to a half or a third, shared so that everyone got a little.
- **The note of 29 August 1990, as a later official writer quotes it.** José Luis Rodríguez, a former economy minister, wrote in 2020 on the Cuban journalists' union site that on 29 August 1990 the press told the public to begin restricting fuel and electricity use and to halt major investments, including the Cienfuegos refinery and the Che Guevara nickel plant, with a proportional cut in cement and building materials. He quotes the note's close, cited to *Granma* of that day, which this page did not open as newsprint: "Estos hechos que se vienen sucediendo comienzan a transformar la vida de nuestro país de una situación normal a un período especial, en época de paz. Hay que estar preparados para ello." He also describes earlier 1990 cuts, including a lower rationed-bread norm outside Havana, and cites a 22 January 1990 *Granma* note that was not opened here. No single figure for the fall in output is adopted on this page. The speeches name an external supply shock and a duty to resist. They do not, in the passages opened here, set that shock beside a public accounting of domestic policy as a cause of the same rank.

**The Malecón, 5 August 1994**

- **The day, in the next day's American press.** The *Washington Post* of 6 August 1994, filing from Mexico City on 5 August, reported a riot on the Havana waterfront after ferry hijackings, and quoted Castro: unless the United States stopped encouraging people to flee by sea, "we will stop blocking the departure of those who want to leave the country." The *Post* called it the first such threat since Mariel. This page did not open a full contemporary Cuban transcript of that appearance. It does not adopt a crowd size. It does not adopt a death toll for 5 August.
- **The standing official retelling.** On 5 August 2025 *Granma*, the Communist Party paper, published "On August 5, the people returned tranquility to their streets." It says the disorders began with "an unusual concentration of antisocial elements, attracted by the rumors of radio stations located in the United States" about leaving by sea without paperwork. It says boats were being seized; that on 3 August "they took La Coubre"; and that on 4 August, in a similar attempt, a 19-year-old police sub-officer, Gabriel Lamoth Caballero, was killed. Those details are the 2025 article's account, not a 1994 document opened here. The article says people then smashed shop windows, looted stores and attacked police in Habana Vieja and Centro Habana. It describes an official of the Young Communist League and workers from the Deauville hotel, the Hermanos Ameijeiras hospital and the Blas Roca contingent shouting "this street belongs to Fidel." It says 300 members of that contingent left work on the Meliá Cohíba hotel at nine in the morning and later doubled, spread from the Casablanca ferry to 23rd and Malecón. It says Castro, at the centre of the upheaval, ordered firearms put away, and that he had wanted "to urge them to be calm, patient, cold-blooded." The literary comparison to an army of thousands is the article's figure of speech, not a count.

**11 July 2021**

- **What people were reported to be saying.** Human Rights Watch, in a report of 19 October 2021 based on interviews and case files, said thousands took to the streets on 11 July across the country over longstanding restrictions on rights, scarcity of food and medicines, and the government's response to Covid-19. It said many chanted "Liberty!" or "Motherland and life", a song it describes as repurposing the government slogan "motherland or death". The same night, the Spanish paper *20 minutos* quoted Miguel Díaz-Canel, in a special television appearance, as saying "La orden de combate está dada, a la calle los revolucionarios" ("The combat order is given; revolutionaries to the street"). It named protests in San Antonio de los Baños, Güira de Melena, Alquízar, Palma Soriano and parts of Havana, and called them peaceful and spontaneous. That is the paper's characterisation. A full Cuban transcript page that Human Rights Watch linked no longer resolved when this page was written.

![Crowd of people filling a street in Havana beside apartment blocks, with a tall monument in the background, in a still from a video](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/images/cuba-crisis-years-havana-protest-2021-07-12.jpg)

*Crowd on a street in Havana, 12 July 2021, as placed by Wikimedia Commons; a still frame from a video by the news site 14ymedio, which released it under CC BY 3.0 through YouTube's Creative Commons option. A single frame cannot show how many people took part; this page marks the scale of the protests as disputed.*

- **The government's account of the streets.** The Interior Ministry's note of 13 July 2021, as carried by the provincial paper *Vanguardia*, said that on the afternoon of 12 July "grupos organizados de elementos antisociales y delincuenciales" in La Güinera, Arroyo Naranjo, tried to reach a police station to attack its officers and damage the building; that they vandalised homes, set fire to containers, damaged power lines, and attacked officers and civilians with knives, stones and blunt objects; and that Diubis Laurencio Tejeda, 36, "resultó fallecido" among the participants. The note gives him a record for contempt, theft and disorder, for which it says he served a sentence. It says the circumstances were under investigation. It does not say how he died. A year later, on 10 July 2022, *Granma* quoted Díaz-Canel calling 11 July a failed "golpe vandálico" ("vandalic coup"), saying the people and the young went into the streets to defend the revolution and that "en mucho menos de 24 horas ya no había disturbios" ("in much less than 24 hours there were no longer any disturbances"), and calling the anniversary "una derrota más del imperialismo."
- **The other account of the death, and of the scale.** *Diario de Cuba* (19 July 2021) quoted a relative, not named, who said a policeman shot Tejeda in the back, that he had never been imprisoned, and that the listed offences were false. A neighbour it names, Iris Sierra, said he was not known to have been in trouble with the law. The paper said it could not independently confirm other deaths reported on social media. Human Rights Watch reported the Cuban Human Rights Observatory's statement that he was shot in the back, and said that as of its October 2021 report nobody had been held accountable. The manner of death and the criminal record are disputed. No higher toll is adopted here. On arrests, Human Rights Watch, citing the Cuban group Cubalex, said more than 1,000 people were arrested, with more than 500 still detained. Citing a government statement of 19 August 2021, it said 67 people had been sentenced. Those are different counts, from different dates, of different things. Human Rights Watch said that in 130 cases it documented, across 13 of 15 provinces, authorities accused only a handful of violence, most often throwing rocks, and that its research indicated the demonstrations were overwhelmingly peaceful. The Interior Ministry's note describes attacks and vandalism in La Güinera. Both descriptions stay on the page.
- **Networks, then a statute.** NetBlocks reported on 12 July 2021 that WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, some Telegram servers, and later YouTube and Google Video, were partly or fully unavailable on state-owned ETECSA, including the cellular network, from 12 July until 18 July, with a brief restoration on 15 July that did not hold. It said the restrictions were likely to limit the flow of information after the protests, and that VPNs still worked for many users. That is a monitor's measurement and its inference, not a government technical statement opened here. It is not a finding of a total shutdown on 11 July. Five weeks later, on 17 August 2021, *Gaceta Oficial* No. 92 published Decree-Law 35 and Ministry of Communications Resolution 105. The decree was not the text of the July interruption. Its preamble says telecommunications are "un medio efectivo para la consolidación de las conquistas del socialismo", and Article 3(a) lists, among general objectives, helping to make those services "un instrumento para la defensa de la Revolución." Article 15(e) makes it a user's duty to prevent the services being used "para atentar contra la Seguridad y el Orden Interior del país, transmitir informes o noticias falsas". Resolution 105's Annex II, as extracted from the gazette PDF, classes "Divulgación de noticias falsas, mensajes ofensivos, difamación con impacto en el prestigio del país" as high danger, classes contents that attack "preceptos constitucionales" and "inciten a movilizaciones" as high danger, and classes cyberterrorism whose aim is to "subvertir el orden constitucional" as very high danger. "Subversión social" appears as "Pretender alterar el orden público, promover la indisciplina social"; the danger cell for that row did not parse cleanly and is not stated here. Human Rights Watch, on 25 August 2021, read the package as requiring providers to interrupt, suspend or terminate service for broadly defined offences, and as treating protected speech as a cybersecurity incident. That is HRW's reading of a decree this page also opened.

## How it works

- [Name-calling](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/name-calling/): "lumpen" at Mariel, "antisocial elements" for the Malecón in *Granma*'s later account, and "elementos antisociales y delincuenciales" in the Interior Ministry note, including for the one man the ministry confirmed dead. The label arrives with the event. A charge, a count, or a cause of death can come later, or not at all. The 1980 slogans already filed on [The Cuba-United States radio war: Radio Swan's cover story and Havana's 'gusanos'](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/cuba-us-radio-war/) are the same device.
- [Identity fusion](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/identity-fusion/): "revolutionary genes" and "revolutionary blood" make leaving a defect of nature, not a disagreement that can be checked. "If that is the price of saving the Revolution" makes a halt to housing a loyalty test. "This street belongs to Fidel", and a combat order sending "revolutionaries" into the street, make the public square a property of one side. Asking what the shortage was, or who was in the crowd, is placed outside the group.
- [Euphemism / doublespeak](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/euphemism/): "special period in time of peace" is the name of an invasion contingency, used for a peacetime supply shock. Castro did state some of the thing itself: oil possibly cut toward zero, housing and clinics stopped for as long as five years, electricity to a half or a third. The name still files those cuts under a wartime category. "Disturbances" and a "vandalic coup" are the later names for 11 July. They are the government's names, not a settled description of every gathering that day.
- [Scapegoating](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/scapegoating/): at Mariel, Castro placed the embassy crisis, the sunk fishing boats and the cancelled contracts on the CIA and on "lumpen" as imperialism's only remaining ally. *Granma*'s 2025 account of 5 August puts the genesis on antisocial elements drawn by U.S. radio rumours. The 2022 anniversary puts 11 July on a vandalic coup and "one more defeat of imperialism." A real external fact can sit inside the compression. Soviet fuel was the supply Castro named in 1990. The U.S. embargo is the government's standing explanation of hardship, and he also named Eastern Europe and the USSR. The device, where it is used, is the further step: many reasons for being in a street, or on a boat, become one bounded author.
- [Card stacking](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/card-stacking/): the special-period speeches pile the external shock and the duty to resist, and do not in the same passages put domestic policy beside that shock as a cause of the same rank. On 11 July the state's own television carried the combat order, NetBlocks measured named platforms down on the only telecommunications company, and the gazette later classed false news and incitement to mobilisation as cybersecurity incidents. Readers inside the country were offered the official pile under conditions that made the other pile harder to circulate. The other pile exists, and it is quoted above. Human Rights Watch's "overwhelmingly peaceful" is also a selection, set against the ministry's list of attacks. Neither selection is treated here as the whole day.

## Then and now

[The Cuba-United States radio war: Radio Swan's cover story and Havana's 'gusanos'](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/cuba-us-radio-war/) already records the 1960s label "gusanos" and the Mariel slogans of April and May 1980. This page starts from that rally instead of repeating it. What is new is the line about revolutionary genes, the dispute over who opened the port, and three later episodes in which the same government, still in office, framed a supply shock as a special period and two street protests as antisocial residue or a vandalic coup.

The latest official text opened here is *Granma* of 5 August 2025, still telling 1994 as the day the people returned tranquillity to their streets. That is a record of continuity. It is not a forecast. This page does not predict a fall, and it does not treat survival through these four episodes as evidence about any later one.

## Positions on the record

- **Havana, 1 May 1980:** the embassy filled because the guard was withdrawn and because imperialism had been stimulating the "lumpen"; Florida took the initiative at Mariel; Cuba would not fire on the boats; anyone who wished to leave should leave; people without revolutionary genes were not needed.
- **Havana, 1990:** a special period in time of peace might follow a break in Soviet and Eastern European supplies; social building could stop for years if that was the price of saving the revolution; the revolution would not fall. Rodríguez's 2020 article presents the 29 August note as the start of that period and as preparation, not as collapse.
- **Havana, on 5 August 1994 and after:** the *Post* quoted a threat to stop blocking departures. *Granma* in 2025 calls the day the work of antisocial elements stirred by U.S. radio, met by the people and by Castro, with firearms ordered away.
- **Havana, on 11 July 2021:** a televised combat order, as quoted the same night; an Interior Ministry note of antisocial and criminal elements, vandalism, and one named dead man with a criminal record, cause unstated; a year later, a vandalic coup defeated in less than 24 hours, and one more defeat of imperialism. Decree-Law 35 describes telecommunications as an instrument for the defence of the revolution and makes transmission of false news a misuse of the service.
- **Protesters, relatives, and human-rights researchers:** thousands in the streets over food, medicine, power, rights and the pandemic; chants of liberty and "motherland and life"; a relative and a neighbour denying Tejeda's criminal record and saying he was shot in the back; Human Rights Watch describing overwhelmingly peaceful protests, abusive detentions, and internet restrictions. *Diario de Cuba* said it could not confirm other deaths.
- **What is documented:** the 1 May 1980 speech's account of the embassy guard, of Mariel, and of revolutionary genes; the Public Health Service figures for the announcement, the embassy round number, and 124,769 arrivals; the 28 January and 7 March 1990 definitions of the special period; Rodríguez's quotation of the 29 August 1990 note; the *Post*'s 6 August 1994 report; *Granma*'s 2025 retelling; the 11 July line as quoted that night; the Interior Ministry note; NetBlocks' platform measurements; Decree-Law 35 and Resolution 105; Human Rights Watch's 2021 reports.
- **What is not shown, or is disputed:** the share of Mariel arrivals who were prisoners or patients; any single figure for the economic contraction; the size of the 5 August 1994 crowd and any death toll for that day; the 2025 claim of a named police killing on 4 August, which is not checked here against a 1994 document; the number of places and people on 11 July; how Tejeda died and whether he had the record the ministry stated; any death toll beyond the one named death; whether every July 2021 interruption was a deliberate block (NetBlocks measured platforms on ETECSA and inferred a purpose; a government technical statement was not opened); the 13 July 1994 sinking of the tug *13 de Marzo*, which is outside the episodes sourced here and for which no toll is used. The government had not fallen by *Granma*'s text of 5 August 2025. This page does not say how long that continues.

## Same-method test

The finding does not depend on the flag. Any government that told people seeking to leave that they lacked the right blood, that renamed a severe peacetime contraction with the title of a wartime plan, or that answered a protest with a label ("antisocial", "mercenary", "vandal") and with a channel restriction classed as cybersecurity, would be scored with these definitions. So would the compression, on any side, of a whole departure into "criminals" without a count. Silver et al. say the great majority of Mariel arrivals were healthy, and that the institutional share was reported rather than enumerated. A page that skipped that sentence would be card-stacking of its own.

## How to spot it

- When a wartime phrase is used for a peacetime shortage, write down the cuts the speech actually lists, and the causes it names. Then ask which causes are absent from the same paragraph.
- When a label ("scum", "antisocial", "delinquent", "mercenary") is issued with the event, treat it as a claim. Ask for the count, the charge, and, if someone is dead, the cause. A prior record, even if true, does not establish how the person died.
- When only one broadcaster is on the air and a monitor shows named platforms down, look for the other account and for the statute. Check whether the statute was published before the outage or after it.
- Do not read a repeated crisis frame as a prediction that the government will fall. The question on this page is the frame. The record is that these frames were used, and that the government was still speaking in its own name decades later.

## Images

| Image | Source | Licence |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Mechanism diagram (above) | Drawn for FRAME from the sources below | CC BY 4.0, FRAME |
| Pier B, Key West, Mariel boatlift (1980) | [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Boats_and_Cuban_refugees_on_Pier_B_Truman_Annex_during_Mariel_Boatlift_(7164217357).jpg) (Florida Keys Public Libraries, Raymond L. Blazevic) | CC BY 2.0 |
| Cuban man on arrival in Key West (1980) | [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cuban_refugee_upon_arrival_in_Key_West_during_the_Mariel_boatlift_(8158419468).jpg) (State Archives of Florida) | Public domain (Florida state-government work) |
| Crowd in Havana (12 July 2021) | [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Protests_in_Havana_against_the_government_of_Cuba.png) (14ymedio video still) | CC BY 3.0 |

### Image gaps

- **Photographs from inside Cuba for Mariel, the Special Period and the Malecón.** The Mariel photographs hosted here were taken in Key West, and the 2021 still comes from an independent Cuban outlet. No openly licensed photograph of the 1980 Havana marches was found (the Commons file of them is a 1980 Argentine magazine page, still under U.S. copyright), and no Malecón photograph of 5 August 1994 or *Granma* front page was cleared. Photographs of the 1994 rafters at sea were searched for on Commons and none with a clear public-domain tag was found.
- **The 23 April 1980 *Granma* slogans and the 1 May chant.** Already quoted on [The Cuba-United States radio war: Radio Swan's cover story and Havana's 'gusanos'](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/cuba-us-radio-war/). Not repeated, and no scan is added here.
- **A scan of the 29 August 1990 *Granma* note.** Not opened as newsprint. The wording above is Rodríguez's 2020 quotation of it.

## Sources

- Fidel Castro, [speech of 1 May 1980, Plaza de la Revolución](http://www.cuba.cu/gobierno/discursos/1980/esp/f010580e.html), official text.
- Fidel Castro, [speech of 28 January 1990, closing the 16th CTC congress](http://www.cuba.cu/gobierno/discursos/1990/esp/f280190e.html), official text.
- Fidel Castro, [speech of 7 March 1990, closing the 5th congress of the Federation of Cuban Women](http://www.cuba.cu/gobierno/discursos/1990/esp/f070390e.html), official text.
- Silver, L. B., B. J. Silver, M. M. Silverman, W. Prescott and L. del Pollard, ["The Cuban Immigration of 1980: A Special Mental Health Challenge"](https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/66182), *Public Health Reports* 100, no. 1 (1985): 40–48, CDC stacks.
- José Luis Rodríguez, ["A 30 años del inicio del Período Especial en Cuba y las enseñanzas de la Historia (I)"](https://www.cubaperiodistas.cu/2020/08/a-30-anos-del-inicio-del-periodo-especial-en-cuba-y-las-ensenanzas-de-la-historia-i/), Cubaperiodistas, 23 August 2020. Quotes the 29 August 1990 *Granma* note; that newsprint was not opened.
- ["Castro threatens to unleash refugees after riot follows ferry hijackings"](https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1994/08/06/castro-threatens-to-unleash-refugees-after-riot-follows-ferry-hijackings/ae4d92f0-fe77-47b9-b183-aed8a91d75e7/), *Washington Post*, 6 August 1994. The opened text is the lead; the rest of the article was behind a prompt.
- ["On August 5, the people returned tranquility to their streets"](https://en.granma.cu/cuba/2025-08-05/on-august-5-the-people-returned-tranquility-to-their-streets), *Granma*, 5 August 2025.
- ["Directo | Díaz-Canel llama a los partidarios del Gobierno cubano: 'La orden de combate está dada'"](https://web.archive.org/web/20210711212804/https://www.20minutos.es/noticia/4760820/0/directo-protestas-cuba-diaz-canel/), *20 minutos*, 11 July 2021, via the Internet Archive.
- ["Nota Informativa del Ministerio del Interior"](http://www.vanguardia.cu/de-cuba/20452-nota-informativa-del-ministerio-del-interior-), *Vanguardia*, 13 July 2021.
- ["Díaz-Canel: Si hay algo que conmemorar este 11 de julio, es la victoria del pueblo cubano"](https://www.granma.cu/cuba/2022-07-10/diaz-canel-si-hay-algo-que-conmemorar-este-11-de-julio-es-la-victoria-del-pueblo-cubano-de-la-revolucion-cubana), *Granma*, 10 July 2022.
- ["Familiares y vecinos del cubano muerto en las protestas en Arroyo Naranjo: 'es falso que fuera un delincuente'"](https://diariodecuba.com/derechos-humanos/1626698496_32764.html), *Diario de Cuba*, 19 July 2021.
- ["Cuba: Peaceful Protesters Systematically Detained, Abused"](https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/10/19/cuba-peaceful-protesters-systematically-detained-abused), Human Rights Watch, 19 October 2021.
- ["Cuba: Telecommunications Decree Curtails Free Speech"](https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/08/25/cuba-telecommunications-decree-curtails-free-speech), Human Rights Watch, 25 August 2021.
- ["Social media restricted in Cuba amid widening anti-government protests"](https://netblocks.org/reports/social-media-restricted-in-cuba-amid-widening-anti-government-protests-QAdrmwyl), NetBlocks, 12 July 2021 (updated 28 July 2021).
- [Decree-Law 35/2021 and Resolution 105/2021](https://www.gacetaoficial.gob.cu/sites/default/files/goc-2021-o92.pdf), *Gaceta Oficial* No. 92 Ordinaria, 17 August 2021.
- [The Cuba-United States radio war: Radio Swan's cover story and Havana's 'gusanos'](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/cuba-us-radio-war/), for the 23 April 1980 *Granma* slogans and the 1 May rally chants, which this page does not repeat.