The mass uprisings in various locations across Cuba on July 11 and 12, 2021 (known in the media as 11J), were a watershed moment for the island.

A few weeks before the protests erupted, the National Revolutionary Police handcuffed me and took me to a station after I published an investigation into torture in Cuba. Regarding that arrest, 37 days before 11J, I told the press that the regime feared that “the freedom experienced in the digital sphere would spill over into the physical world.”

I was referring to the growing reach of social media among Cubans and how it had energized social movements like the Evangelical Civic Movement (MoCE) and would later do the same with 11J, whose initial spark came from a call to action in a Facebook group. In that digital space, Cubans did everything forbidden in the “physical” world: express themselves, associate, meet, and organize outside the state.

Another key element that contributed to the large youth participation in the protests was related to content exposure. Tens of thousands of students of all ages had been studying at home for months, with state schools closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Disconnected from the indoctrination factory that is the socialist school system, and also deprived of their normal social interactions due to restrictions on movement and gatherings, online content increasingly occupied their attention.

At that time, Facebook and other platforms circulated more content that differed from socialist rhetoric, especially libertarian and conservative content, than the tightly controlled Cuban media and educational institutions.

Therefore, after the brutal repression of July 11, the authorities established “social observatories” to closely monitor students in their schools. A former employee of the Ministry of Education (MINED) in Artemisa province exposed this topic here for the first time. He witnessed firsthand the implementation of this new surveillance tool. Here is my interview with him.

How would you summarize your experience at the local MINED office where you worked?

“Big Brother is watching you.” We read these words in the first chapter of George Orwell’s novel “1984.” In it, any possible dissent against the rulers is extremely monitored and severely punished. In “1984,” the rulers even came to “control” the history of their society.

What Orwell imagined as dystopian fiction is materializing, not through cameras on the walls, but through the educational system, which has become the surveillance and indoctrination arm of the Cuban state.

What are the “social observatories,” and who staffs them?

The “social observatories” were established in Cuba as a result of the July 11th protests. A social observatory was established in each municipal Education Directorate and educational institution with internet access.

In the Education Directorates, the observatories are composed of the director and deputy director, communication and educational technology advisors, a history methodology specialist, and the heads of the different educational levels.

In the institutions, they are composed of a communication activist, an IT specialist, a history advisor, teachers, and students from the Federation of Secondary School Students (FEEM).

In the process of establishing the observatories in secondary and upper secondary schools, local authorities were required to identify students who would act as “revolutionary activists” in the “battle” on social media.

In selecting these students, emphasis was placed on those who would be pursuing or opting for teacher training programs.

The observatories in the Education Directorates were joined by staff with internet access as “revolutionary activists.” As far as they are concerned, their “work” on social media is an indicator to be considered in the periodic evaluations carried out by their superiors.

What was the purpose of these “social observatories”?

The stated purpose of these observatories is “combating online attacks and implementing the political and ideological work (of the Ministry of Education),” according to documents I accessed.

In practice, they are responsible not only for “combating” online attacks, but also for monitoring the social media accounts of students and workers in the education sector throughout the country.

Each municipality was instructed to compile a list of all students who had more than 500 followers on any of their social media accounts. These students were to be the focus of surveillance and monitoring.

Did anything in particular happen regarding young people who took to the streets during the July 11th demonstrations?

Yes. After the events of July 11th, orders were issued from the highest levels of the country to conduct “differentiated work” with all students who had participated in the protests in any way.

But not only that. The observatories were also instructed to monitor those teenagers and young adults whose parents participated in the protests.

Of course, they were also instructed to digitally monitor all those identified by the observatories as sharing content related to July 11th on their social media.

Five years after July 11th, are these “social observatories” of the Ministry of Education still active?

While the observatories were implemented in the wake of the July 11th protests, their purpose goes far beyond that.

The long-term goal is for them to remain as groups to identify any possible “ideological deviation” and to defend the Revolution on social media, on an ongoing basis.

We know that this type of entity has precedents under the current system.

The “social observatories” are not an isolated case in the Cuban education system. They respond to an interest in control and indoctrination that materialized in 1961 with the nationalization of education. At that time, the possibility of private education in Cuba was eliminated, and the State was given total control of the education system.

In the Law of Nationalization of Education, the State acknowledged its intention to eliminate any possibility of the propagation of “counterrevolutionary” ideas in Cuban schools.

It stated: “It is evident and notorious that in many educational centers, especially those operated by Catholic religious orders, the directors and teachers have been actively carrying out counterrevolutionary propaganda, to the great detriment of the intellectual, moral, and political development of the children and adolescents in their care.”

With the nationalization of education, the Revolution not only destroyed and recreated the educational system in its own image, but also eliminated any space where parents could choose the type of education their children receive: a fundamental right enshrined in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

And the “social observatories” are a continuation of that social control strategy, right?

Undoubtedly. Almost 70 years later, when students’ social media is monitored by “social observatories,” what we see is not authoritarian innovation, but the fulfillment of the original design: a State that indoctrinates, monitors, and controls from childhood, because it does not conceive of citizens, but subjects.

Education, instead of being the tool for freedom that Martí envisioned, became the instrument to ensure that no one thinks differently. And the task of monitoring the daring ones now falls to the “social observatories.”