The first secretary of the Party in Santiago de Cuba, Beatriz Johnson, was stripped on Tuesday during the last day of the emblematic Festival del Caribe.
In a video shared on Facebook by independent journalist Yosmany Mayeta Labrada, the leader is seen on the street, surrounded by a circle of women dressed in white dancing and singing around her, while shaking some herbs over her head.
One of them took her by the hands and made her spin around, finally lifting her arms above her head and letting her go, while dozens of people watched the curious scene unfold in front of the former City Hall building.
While the people of Santiago de Cuba try to survive in the midst of a brutal shortage of food and transportation and long power outages, their top leader tries to portray a sense of closeness by appearing in a religious cultural event.
The Johnson show was one of the last acts before closing an event that, in the opinion of a large part of the population, should not have been held at the current time. But for the leader and her team, it was more important to allocate scarce resources to the festival, despite the difficulties and shortages.
Recently, Beatriz Johnson joined the sweet potato planting during a tour of the municipality of Palma Soriano, a moment that was shared on social media as an "example to follow."
The governor of Santiago de Cuba, Manuel Falcón, shared an image of Johnson "bending his back" in a furrow at El Sitio alongside farmers, although the latter were not visible in the photograph.
According to the governor, the leader has been involved in sugarcane harvests, coffee picking, and volunteer work since she was a child, and now "with the same humility as always, she has put her hands to the soil."
The secretary of the PPC, who resides in one of the few places in Santiago that is not suffering from blackouts or water shortages, very close to the Revolution Square and a military zone, urged people in March to "not despair" in the face of the water supply crisis.
"Let people know that the little bit of water will arrive tomorrow, or the day after, or a little late, but that nobody should despair," he said in a work meeting.
A few days before, when the people took to the streets to protest the lack of food and power outages, she provided a series of explanations that, as she later claimed, were understood by the citizens. However, a few hours later, the demonstrations resumed.
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