AUSTIN, Texas — They're more than 1,000 miles away but a Cuban family in Texas says they're living every day wondering when change will happen in their home country. 

What You Need To Know

  • Protesters in Cuba are calling for political change in a country governed by the Communist Party for six decades 

  • Cubans have expressed anger over long lines and shortages of food and medicines, as well as repeated electricity outages 

  • A Texas father with strong ties to the country says his relatives there are living in fear 

  • Onel Riveron also says internet service is sometimes limited to one hour per day in Cuba

When the protests first started in Cuba around mid-July, Onel Riveron received messages from his family living there. 

"I got a couple messages the first day. That was it," Riveron said. "Everybody's extremely scared of everything."

Almost every time he gets on his computer, he heads straight to Facebook. 

Riveron moved to Austin when he was a teenager after his father was granted asylum in the United States. They left because of the dictatorship in Cuba. 

Twenty-four years later, with protests happening across the country, he said not much has changed, and Cubans want their liberty. 

"They're demanding their rights," Riveron said. "They're demanding freedom."  

"That change, you know, goes from we need better socioeconomic aid, to we want a change in government," Brian Fonseca, the director of the Institute for Public Policy at Florida International University, said. 

He said Cubans want President Miguel Diaz-Canel gone, and the protests most likely won't stop until that's the case. 

"I think the government, if they want to continue to manage the protests, they're going to have to make some concessions or those protests are going to continue to endure," Fonseca said.

"That dude needs to turn in the keys and get out, plain and simple," Riveron said. 

At the beginning of the protests, his aunts and uncles were reaching out, but soon after, the government implemented an internet blackout making it difficult to communicate. 

"They'll have the internet for like an hour of the day," Riveron said. 

According to Fonseca, it also creates obstacles in organizing protests. 

"It disabled the ability for Cubans to send family around the island viral images of protesters in the streets, because that was inspiring more people to go out to say, 'Oh, my goodness, look at the protests going on in Havana, we're in Santiago, let's do the same,'" Fonseca said.

For now, Onel said he'll do what he can to speak up for his family from here in the states. 

"It's very stressful, and it's been very emotional, too," Riverson said.