Sandro Castro, grandson of the late dictator Fidel Castro, published his new attempt to promote the consumption of a devalued beer brand in Cuba.
In the video, he appears as his character "Vampirach" and interacts grotesquely with several young women in a park on Avenida Paseo in Havana.
Sandro bursts onto the scene in front of four girls who are drinking beer and tells them that they are in "falpismo mode in action," suggesting explicit sexual intentions and further degrading the tone of their content.
At the cry of "¡Cristach!", a mocking distortion of the brand's name, the Castro vampire reveals his true intention: to sell by any means a poorly valued drink that has been rejected by its own market.
There is a latent fetishism in his strategy. The vampire grandson sexualizes the act of drinking beer and associates it with the image of the young woman as a reward or a consequence of consumption. Furthermore, he uses the figure of the bloodsucker, traditionally loaded with erotic symbolism, to amplify this.
This strategy is not new. For months, Sandro Castro has been using the caricature of his "Vampirach" to constantly promote beer in his videos, betting on a youthful, carefree, and sexualized image that aims to conceal the bad reputation of Cristal, the flagship product of Cervecería Bucanero S.A.
In 2023, the Cristal beer was ranked among the worst in the world by the specialized site BeerAdvocate, one of the most respected international references among beer enthusiasts.
He received a score of 65 points. Cristal ranked 30,174 among all the evaluated beers and 211 within its category of "American adjunct lager," defined as a low-flavor, light beer produced on a large scale with inexpensive grains.
The position was a disgrace, considering the tradition of this brand that once ranked among the best beers in the world.
Consumer reviews were harsh: "basic," "poor," "lacking character", "refreshing only out of necessity." For many, drinking Cristal is more of an option than a choice, in a Cuban market that has been suffering from a severe supply crisis for years.
While platforms like BeerAdvocate promote respect for beer, in Cuba the sale of Cristal and the use of cartoon characters like Sandro Castro to disguise the decline of the product are simply another example of a manipulated market, where consumption does not depend on quality, but on scarcity.
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