Emilio Roman Matos keeps returning to the municipal court in Havana’s Diez de Octubre neighbourhood to keep himself up to date with the trials of dozens of people who took to the streets to protest against the Cuban government in July 2021. Three of them are his children. Nearly 800 people have been prosecuted for taking part in the protests, the most important public demonstrations the country had seen in decades. Out of these, 96 come from Matos’s neighbourhood of La Güinera, one of Havana’s poorest.