SAN DIEGO — As thousands of Cubans rise up in opposition to the island's Communist regime, demonstrations in solidarity with the Cuban people have now grown from Florida to California.
Dozens took to the streets of Pacific Beach Wednesday, demanding that the Biden administration take action.
A passionate group of Cuban-Americans and their supporters joined their voices with tens of thousands of others around the country and the world, calling for change.
"After 62 years they have had enough, and it's just boiled over and exploded," said Jack Otero, who fled Cuba with his family when he was just three years old and is now fighting for the liberation of his homeland from Cuba's Communist dictatorship.
"Right now, it is absolutely brutal what is going on with the people," Otero told News 8. "I'm getting reports of bodies rotting in the hospitals, leaving people to die at home. They have zero food, all the food goes to the leadership."
His daughter Danielle organized the protest in Pacific Beach in solidarity with other demonstrations around the United States.
"The people don't have water, food, medicine. They have no access to vaccinations," she said. "The Cuban government has turned off all access to the Internet, to telephones so they no longer have a voice."
In response, these demonstrators are raising their voices, and say they are praying that U.S. leaders are listening.
"I'm calling on President Biden and his administration to help the Cuban people," pleaded Danielle's mother, Sandy Otero. "Because if they don't, the people won't survive."
As the protests in Cuba erupted this past weekend, President Biden issued a message that the United States stands with the Cuban people fighting for freedom from the island's authoritarian regime.
"We're trying to destroy communism!" shouted Javier Castillo, a 19-year-old demonstrator who fled Cuba when he was 7. "We don't want communism anymore!"
Castillo said that he hopes Biden's words turn into action.
"I lived through it and it is the worst," he said. "You can not own a house, have a car. You can not succeed: you are just a slave to the government."
His immediate concern: the welfare of the loved ones he left behind.
"I still have family back there," he added, "I can't contact them at all."
"God bless those people who are out there helping because it is going to take us American citizens to help them," Sandy Otero said. "They can not do it on their own."
Another local rally to support the demonstrators in Cuba is set for this Sunday, July 18 at Waterfront Park in San Diego, scheduled to get underway at 1 p.m.
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