A mother, a podium, and an uncomfortable question: Where is the revolution?

Fate wanted Mayelín Carrasco Álvarez, a 47-year-old Cuban mother of three, to protest alone from a platform in Río Cauto, Granma, exactly 65 years after the dictator Fidel Castro declared his famous phrase to the world: “Homeland or Death”, the same phrase that today resonates as an ironic echo in a country where the homeland aches and death lurks.

“Where is the revolution?” shouted Mayelín, as the bewildered onlookers watched her as if witnessing an act of madness.

It could be no other way; in communist Cuba, a gesture as common in any democracy as a peaceful protest becomes a reckless challenge, an act of courage that often requires a dose of irrationality, the same that a mother may possess when she reaches the limit of her patience.

Little did it matter that Mayelín, in her ignorance or perhaps as a means of survival against repression, romanticized "the revolution of Fidel and Raúl". It also didn't matter that, in her speech from the podium, she absolved Díaz-Canel of the misery that afflicts her family. "Whose fault is it?", she asked tirelessly during her brief but powerful protest.

It took only minutes for that mother to be shoved down by two plainclothes soldiers in the Ángel Frías square and subsequently arrested. Her attempt to absolve the true culprits of the disaster known as the "Cuban Revolution" did not succeed.

Against Mayelín, the repressive apparatus of a totalitarian state came down with full force, feeling threatened even by the solitary protest of a mother in a rural town. Within minutes, the Communist Party activated the protocol rehearsed for similar cases. How dare this woman demand anything! From the Municipal Bureau of the PCC, images of the empty square began to circulate, perhaps as a public reprimand or as a strategy to curb the dangerous spread of the dignity that Mayelín represents.

“The squares in Cuba belong to the revolutionaries!”, could be read in the post by the official in charge of the "Political-Ideological Sphere" of the municipality. A clumsy attempt by the regime's ideologues who celebrated their own fear as a great achievement.

If human rights and fundamental freedoms were respected in Cuba, it wouldn't be newsworthy for a mother to protest the devastating crisis that the nation is facing. But that is not the case. Protesting in a communist regime is an act of extreme bravery, which may be why more and more mothers are breaking the silence, as a mother will do anything for her child.

But the martyrdom of Mayelín has only just begun. A statement from the Municipal Government deemed her behavior unacceptable. How dare she!—they say— we have helped her, we provided her with a wooden and zinc house… we offered her a position as a cleaning assistant.

In Cuba, exercising human rights seems to require a clean record, a submissive attitude, and, of course, being cautious to avoid upsetting the communists.

Six decades later, "Homeland or Death" is a fulfilled prophecy: the homeland is an illusion and death lurks for those who challenge fear. Mayelín protested today out of hunger; the regime may erase her photos, but not the question that millions silently repeat: Where is the revolution?