On July 26, two weeks after a historic series of protests rocked Cuba, the island nation’s internet went dark for several hours. 

It was the latest digital shutdown to occur during the wave of unrest. On July 11 — fueled by electricity cuts, food and medicine shortages, and a spiraling economic crisis — thousands of Cubans took to the streets in the country’s largest protest movement in decades. Images and videos of the protests ricocheted across social media. Shortly thereafter, digital rights groups began reporting a series of internet outages, while authorities blocked access to social media sites like Facebook and Twitter for days on end.

The Cuban government, led by Raúl Castro’s successor, President Miguel Díaz Canal, quickly moved to clamp down on the unrest. Since protests broke out, the government has detained an estimated 700 people, according to human rights organizations, and relatives of those held report being left in the dark for extended periods of time about their family members’ whereabouts. “At any moment, they could show up at my door,” a Cuban independent journalist told the New York Times. “It’s a fear that’s with me from the moment I wake up.”

The country’s last major protest movement was in 1994. That was a previous internet era, a time before smartphones and social media. In 2018, after years of internet restrictions, Cuba began permitting 3G for mobile phones, and later legalized wireless networks in homes and businesses. Many believe the country’s expanded internet access has played a key role in the current protest moment.