Madrid/Five years after July 11, 2021, the Cuban Revolution is dead. The people, the military, the leaders and even the news anchor who puts makeup on the corpse know it. The only thing missing is the funeral. And that funeral is unbearably prolonged because those who inherited the funeral home also own the weapons, the prisons and the keys to the cemetery.
9/11 did not overthrow the regime, but it destroyed its narrative forever. That day a “paid minority from Miami” did not take to the streets, as the propaganda used to say. Cuba came out. The humble neighborhoods left, the young people without a future, the exhausted mothers, the blacks that power presumes to have redeemed and the workers to whom six decades of socialism have barely guaranteed the right to stand in lines.
Five years later, Prisoners Defenders counts 1,306 political prisoners. Among them there are 40 people who were detained when they were still minors and 16 of them remain detained in centers for adults. The project that promised to create a new man has ended up imprisoning teenagers to keep a group of chubby, enguayaberados in power.
Cuba reaches this anniversary almost in total darkness. In 2026, the national electrical system has already suffered four general collapses, two of them in the same week before 11J. Electricity has become a Marian apparition: no one knows when it will arrive, how long it will last or what sin must be atoned for to deserve it. The Government blames the embargo, the fuel, the heat, a breakdown, Trump and, when they run out of culprits, even Thomas Edison for having popularized the light bulb.
The empty casserole has become the most popular musical instrument in the country. It does not require studies, scores or permission from the Ministry of Culture
But Cubans are no longer protesting just to get the power back on. In Central Havana, when the service returned, some neighbors continued in the street shouting: “We want freedom, not ordinary.” That phrase contains a decisive political evolution. For years the regime opted to reduce each conflict to a material need. Hunger, but not rights. Misery, but never freedom. Now people are starting to name the disease and not just its symptoms.
The banging of pots and pans, the blocked streets and burning garbage are the noise of a society that stretches the rope of fear one meter every day, and that is about to burst it. The empty casserole has become the most popular musical instrument in the country. It does not require studies, scores or permission from the Ministry of Culture. Just satiety and a ladle.
Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro’s disastrous interview did more than fuel headlines. It caused a short circuit within the ruling party itself. Suddenly, the guardians of Orthodoxy began to talk too much. Leticia Martínez’s mother – Díaz-Canel’s press chief – published on Facebook what, surely, her daughter hears every day in the corridors of the Palace. Without intending to, he ended up airing the conversations of the same power that has always demanded absolute silence from others.
Old Ángel Castro watches from his grave how his offspring extended the fence of their properties to the entire island, until turning an entire country into family heritage
The contrast was even more revealing. While Manuel Marrero, Gaesa’s political creature, rushed out to support López-Calleja’s son and ensure that everything was under control, Díaz-Canel remained too eloquent in silence.
It was fascinating to watch the reaction of the courtiers. Israel Rojas – poet of the bulb and otherness – beat his chest regretting having been so naive, as if he had just discovered that hereditary privileges existed in Cuba. Michel Torres Corona, the increasingly decaffeinated presenter of With Edgedirected his darts against El Cangrejo and Sandro Castro with a speech that gave off less moral indignation than class resentment. He did not seem shocked that a revolutionary aristocracy existed. It seemed to bother him that he didn’t belong to her.
The scene was almost Shakespearean. Court jesters are quick to bow their heads to the Crown, but they detest royal infantry. They swear allegiance to the kingdom while murmuring against the princes. And in that theater of forced fidelities, the great truth that Castroism has been trying to hide for decades was revealed: the Revolution ended up becoming a hereditary monarchy that preserves the language of Marxism to justify the privileges of a dynasty.
A system whose international defenders only know how to invoke victimhood is no longer a “beacon” of absolutely nothing, but a dark ruin
Fidel Castro asked in 1961 if the weapons of the Revolution were in the hands of “the little children of the rich” or the “little gentlemen.” Sixty-five years later, the question has returned like a boomerang, but this time against his own family. Those who bear his last name travel on yachts and jets; they speak in the name of Cuba without ever having received a vote; They move through the halls of power like natural heirs to an estate. Old Ángel Castro watches from his grave as his offspring extended the fence of their properties to the entire Island, until turning an entire country into family heritage. No one can protest against this latifundia without risking ending up imprisoned, exiled or marked as an enemy. It is the perfect estate.
A regime that needs to persecute and threaten young people and adolescents because it can no longer buy loyalties is not defending a cause: it is administering terror. A system whose international defenders only know how to invoke victimhood is no longer a “beacon” of absolutely nothing, but a dark ruin. And a State whose own propaganda apparatus ends up leaking its palace quarrels on Facebook is no longer governing: it is broadcasting its collapse live.
The Revolution is dead. His corpse still occupies the ministries, gives orders, signs sentences and appears on television, made up like a zombie. But it sucks. And no matter how much ideological incense its priests burn, all of Cuba recognizes the stench. It is time to close the coffin, lower the body to the ground and return Cuba to those who still breathe, before the entire country ends up becoming a cemetery.
