Related videos:
The "First Lady" of Cuba, Lis Cuesta Peraza, was notably absent from the traditional meeting of foreign leaders' wives held in Tianjin, during the 2025 Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Summit.
The meeting was led by Peng Liyuan, the wife of Chinese President Xi Jinping, who welcomed the spouses of the heads of state and government present at the regional event. According to the Xinhua agency, the agenda included a boat tour along the Haihe River, a historical and cultural symbol of the port city.
Peng greeted each guest and posed for a group photograph before embarking on the river cruise, accompanied by children's songs and waving flags as a welcoming gesture. During the journey, the visitors sampled Chinese tea, enjoyed a concert featuring the sanxian —a traditional three-stringed instrument— and learned about the evolution of Tianjin as a center of cultural exchange.
Among the attendees were the wives of the presidents of Uzbekistan, Mongolia, Azerbaijan, and Turkey, as well as the first ladies of Armenia, Egypt, Malaysia, and Nepal. The daughter of the president of Iran, Masoud Pezeshkian, also participated.
The exclusion of Cuesta Peraza from this protocol activity drew attention, given that Cuba is an observer state in the SCO and the leader Miguel Díaz-Canel attended the summit as a special guest.
Her absence at the women’s event, which typically serves as a diplomatic and cultural showcase, reinforces the perception of the Cuban regime’s progressive irrelevance in multilateral settings, as well as a disregard for the subaltern and mendicant role of Havana in relation to its international allies.
While the other attendees highlighted China's achievements and the value of its traditions, the absence of the Cuban representative underscored Havana's diminishing prominence in international forums.
In these forums, Díaz-Canel's 'leadership' and his "not-so-first lady" are the talk among allies weary of subsidizing an unsustainable statu quo, which only becomes appealing as it forces the Cuban regime to concede more and more sovereignty in exchange for its permanence in the club of autocracies.
This is not to mention the effect that, according to criticism on social media, the "glamour" of Cuesta Peraza has, a government official from the Ministry of Culture noted for her obvious bad taste and lack of refinement at protocol events for which she is neither qualified nor has any actual role, except that of a mere figure and companion to a puppet with no real power, whose strings are pulled by the true leaders of the dictatorship.
Filed under: