News SOS for Journalists Latin America Culture

Photos Photo of the Day Videos

The Cuban Revolution’s Funeral is Being Unbearably Delayed

Amid political prisoners, blackouts, and palace infighting, the fifth anniversary of July 11 confirms the regime’s final exhaustion.

By Yunior García Aguilera (14ymedio)

HAVANA TIMES – Five years after July 11, 2021, the Cuban Revolution is dead. The people know it, the military knows it, the leaders know it, and even the evening news anchor who puts makeup on the corpse every night knows it. The only thing missing is the burial. And that funeral is being unbearably prolonged because those who inherited the funeral home also control the weapons, the prisons, and the keys to the cemetery.

July 11 did not bring down the regime, but it destroyed its narrative forever. That day, it was not a “minority paid by Miami,” as government propaganda claimed, that took to the streets. It was Cuba. The poor neighborhoods came out, young people with no future, exhausted mothers, Black Cubans whom the government boasts of having redeemed, and workers to whom six decades of socialism have guaranteed little more than the right to stand in line.

Five years later, Prisoners Defenders counts 1,306 political prisoners. Among them are 40 people who were arrested while still minors, and 16 of them remain incarcerated in adult facilities. The project that promised to create a “new man” has ended up imprisoning teenagers in order to keep a group of paunchy men in guayaberas in power.

Cuba reaches this anniversary in almost total darkness. In 2026, the national electrical grid has already suffered four nationwide collapses, two of them during the same week leading up to July 11. Electricity has become like an apparition of the Virgin Mary: no one knows when it will appear, how long it will last, or what sin must be atoned for to deserve it. The government blames........

© Havana Times