The article argues that we need to analyse the way protest is being channelled in illiberal regimes, in order to understand how they manage to prevent the emergence of political challengers to authoritarian rule. Drawing on the Cuban case, the text shows that such channelling allows the intentional as well as unintentional disconnection between social and cultural claims on the one hand and political claims on the other hand, which in turn isolates political dissidents from other types of dissenters (for instance in the cultural sphere), thus preventing a more unified contentious movement from emerging.