es 
The decision of the Cuban telecommunications company “ETECSA” to dollarize and increase the prices of telephone and mobile data rates, announced on May 30, shook the Cuban regime, who saw how civil society, but mainly university students raised their voices against what the population considered a political measure of virtual repression.
This great discontent is due to the fact that ETECSA, the company that controls the entire telecommunications monopoly in the country and has been managed 100% by the State since 2011, is practically the only option for citizens to have access to mobile and fixed telephone service, as well as Internet.
In a country where protesting is punishable by imprisonment, the Díaz-Canel administration found itself facing a university movement that expressed its discontent with physical and digital protests. Along with the university strike calling in a large part of the country’s faculties against the increase in fees, an intense online debate was generated that confronted the coordinated State narratives created to divert the focus of the protest.
We analyze how this conversation was seen online, due to the large number of negative messages around the issue and the institutional campaigns in favor of ETECSA that were generated from the State. In a social listening analysis between June 2 and July 5 with words around the topic, we found 7,770 mentions in which the digital confrontation between citizens and the Díaz-Canel regime is evident.
Terms such as tarifazo, #NoAlTarifazo, university strike and student protests added up to 2,490 mentions; while the government campaign grouped under the hashtag #EtecsaConCuba added up to around 4,029 mentions. The difference? The terms associated with the citizen protest are grouped in authentic and different content, while the state campaign massively replicates the same messages in several platforms.
The measures that triggered the new wave of protests
On May 30, 2025, millions of Cubans woke up to the news that the only telecommunications company in the county was imposing a recharge limit in national currency, which set off alarms among users, digital activists and defenders of the right to information.
The new monthly recharge limit was set at 360 Cuban pesos (CUP), which is equivalent to approximately 1 U.S. dollar. With that amount, a user can barely buy a plan of 6GB of mobile data per month. To put it in perspective, 6GB allows you to do just one of these things:
- Surf basic web pages for 120 hours
- Use social networks for 60 hours
- Watch 12 hours of video on YouTube in low quality
- Accessing TikTok or Reels for just 8 hours
- Participate in virtual classes for a maximum of 10 hours.
And for those who want more data? ETECSA offered other plans, but exclusively in US dollars, ranging from 4 GB per month for 10 USD to 16 GB per month for 35 USD. In a country where the monthly minimum wage is about 2,100 CUP, or 5.6 USD, accessing these plans is practically impossible for most, which ignited protests, mainly among university students.
The 5 tactics used by the regime to control the ETECSA narrative
Faced with the so-called “ETECSA tarifazo”, the Federation of University Students (FEU) of Cuba took Cuban society by surprise by organizing a student strike starting June 5. The regime tried to control the narrative about the strike that grew as more students joined the protest with open letters and communiqués through social networks.
Under the hashtags #OjosEnLaUH and #ParónUniversitario, which were positioned as a trend in X in Cuba, civil society added around 5,698 messages expressing their discontent and joining the students who called for these protests.
What did the regime do to try to control the narrative and dilute the protest?
1. Deny the protest
In several news broadcasts the regime showed images of supposedly false publications about the decision of students not to attend classes until ETECSA adapted its rates to the reality of Cuba.
Interviews with several students were also broadcasted in order to expose the rejection of the alleged “calls from abroad”, to which the Cuban regime attributes any manifestation of popular discontent.
2. Attempting to negotiate
During the peak days of the protest (June 3 and 4), the official discourse in social media focused on new “actions to increase Internet access”, with the provision of “12 GB for 720 CUP” and “free of charge” access to 26 educational portals, as a palliative measure in the face of student discontent that reached university groups usually close to the ruling party.
3. Using social media as official channels
In the social listening analysis we conducted between June 2 and July 5, we found 7,770 mentions linked to the “tarifazo” and the protests, marking a highly polarized conversation in two social networks: X, with 55% of the conversation (4,280 mentions) and Facebook, with 39.8% (3,090 mentions). Instagram (3.38%) and TikTok (1.76%) also discussed the topic but to a lesser extent.
During this period, Facebook functioned as an official channel of state entities for the construction of the regime’s narrative, usually with extensive detailed explanations about the “benefits” of the measures and to frame the conflict as a “controlled dialogue” between the Federation of University Students (FEU) and ETECSA, omitting any mention of strikes, protests and conflicts.
On the other hand, in X, was most of the protest conversation. Although Etecsa accounts and officials promoted the State’s version, most of the conversation was about organized citizen complaints, with a strong role of university students, focused on criticizing the rate hike, the lack of Internet access and the violated rights.
The volume of critical terms such as “tarifazo”, “protests”, “academic strike” and “university students” clearly dominates the cloud of most used words and confirms the contesting character of the conversation cycle.
4. Use of coordinated accounts
Both on X and Facebook, there was a wide repetition of the same messages that amplified the official narrative about ETECSA. An example is the more than two thousand mentions (2,051) with the hashtag #EtecsaConCuba, with messages with a nationalist or patriotic sense, composed by structure of mentioning other state actors and other hashtags, as well as the emoji of the Cuban flag, but in such a specific order that reveals the illegitimate coordination to replicate the message.
An example of this structure is in this message that was repeated at least 40 times in X, demonstrating the coordination of users to position this narrative:
@DiazCanelB @DrRobertoMOjeda @PartidoPCC @rlicea_mojena @SentirPinero1 @RadiocubaSTX @GEIC_DICE @Anaya88Luis #RadiocubaIJ #IslaDeLaJuventud #SiSePuede #SentirPinero #EtecsaConCuba @ctc_isla
This coordination of users also included a network of 29 ETECSA accounts or accounts of people linked to the company, which were joined by state media such as “Cubadebate” and “Juventud Rebelde”, as well as the Union of Young Communists (UJC); generating 585 mentions as a whole out of the 7,770 analyzed.
The ETECSA_Cuba Camagüey on Facebook account stands out, with 106 mentions with the hashtag #EtecsaConCuba, as well as three other accounts linked to the company (“ETECSA_Cuba Matanzas”, “ETECSA_Cuba Pinar del Río” and “ETECSA_Cuba Las Tunas”) which are among the ten with the most mentions of that hashtag, in which most of the messages were in support of state measures or messages about improvements in the operation of ETECSA, spreading the campaign in different cities and regions of Cuba.
Other state actors joined this campaign grouped under the hashtag #EtecsaConCuba, such as the Ministries of Communications, Finance and Prices, Domestic Trade and Higher Education; as well as the provincial government of Camagüey, the Sports Institute of Camagüey and the official account of the Government of Cuba, all on Facebook. In X we also find the account of the Cuban Customs promoting these institutional messages with the same hashtag.
5. The repression card
The repressive mechanism of the Cuban regime was activated after the protests against ETECSA’s rate increase was also denounced through social networks by citizens, NGOs and independent media.
The publications not only speak of “repression” in a generic way, but detail the methods and repressive actors; including physical violence by the police, digital censorship through pressure by deleting from Whatsapp groups and criminalization of protests, with threats on their relatives, in publications made on X and Facebook.
🚨 Raymar Aguado recibió un acta por “incitar a delinquir” solo por apoyar el paro universitario.
Fue insultado, amenazado y su padre presionado para que lo convenza de callar.
La represión en Cuba no perdona ni el derecho a opinar.https://t.co/qmh43D6YVj— ClickCuba (@ClickCuba) June 11, 2025
State control of narrative vs. citizen reality
Despite the official effort to present positive narratives that included publications in commercial tone of promotions, benefits and plans such as recharges from abroad with unlimited Internet access; authentic citizen expressions in networks joined the conversation around ETECSA’s measures, even using the hashtag promoted by the State (#EtecsaConCuba) to demonstrate against these actions.
While on the government side we find accounts of ETECSA officials (like this one) or accounts without avatar photo or biography (like this one) replicating state narratives, on the citizen side we have not only more than 5,600 tweets in the trends #OjosEnLaUH and #ParónUniversitario, but at least 3,400 mentions of protest terms such as #NoAlTarifazo, tarifazo, university strike, student protests and mentions of the faculties that rose up in protest in the streets.
Likewise, coverage by independent media (local, national and international) generated 23.2% of the mentions (1,646), being higher than the number of mentions generated by state media, which represented 1.9% (133).
Four years after 11J, the protests against ETECSA’s tariff hike show that the narrative control of the Cuban regime does not manage to contain the growing citizen discontent. In fact, according to the Cuban Observatory of Conflicts (OCC) in June there were a total of 745 protests, complaints and civic actions. The report also noted that actions in defiance of the police state reached 283 records, almost double the previous high of 159.
In the midst of a suffocating economic crisis, the new generations (mainly university students) have taken center stage as critical voices articulating their rejection both in the streets and in digital spaces. Despite repression, censorship and the state propaganda machine, protest remains a legitimate tool of resistance; while the state multiplies coordinated accounts to repeat its version, the citizenry responds with real, organized and courageous messages, demanding dignified living conditions and the right to express themselves freely.
For more information on the digital socio-political conversation in the region, follow us as @ProBoxVE on all social networks.
