Carlos Lazo resumes his shipments to Cuba and returns to the fold of the regime with a donation of powdered milk

The Cuban-American activist Carlos Lazo, leader of the organization ‘Bridges of Love’, reemerged this week in the Cuban public sphere with a new donation of five thousand pounds of powdered milk sent from the United States to the province of Holguín, as reported by the Cuban Company of Airports and Airport Services (ECASA) on the social network X.

The shipment, intended for pediatric hospitals and victims in eastern Cuba, marks a new chapter in the fluctuating relationship between Lazo and the Havana regime. This act of solidarity has been celebrated by official institutions, which had maintained a noticeable and tense silence regarding the professor based in Seattle in recent months.

In 2024, Lazo faced several confrontations with Cuban authorities after reporting that the Ministry of Public Health (MINSAP) was preventing him from directly delivering donations to hospitals and orphanages, citing bureaucratic obstacles and "mysterious regulations."

Those criticisms, unusual for someone historically aligned with the government, caused discomfort for the all-powerful minister José Ángel Portal Miranda –whom Miguel Díaz-Canel retains in his position despite the epidemiological crisis and the collapse of the country's healthcare system– and among the power structures that had until then exalted him as a symbol of the "patriotic exile" advocating for the lifting of the embargo.

Despite that brief distancing, the leader of 'Puentes de Amor' has resumed his usual narrative of victimhood regarding the "U.S. blockade" and support for the regime's discourse, coinciding with the reactivation of his humanitarian shipments.

On social media, government supporters and official media have portrayed the new release as a demonstration of "solidarity and love," without mentioning previous conflicts or the restrictions imposed by the Cuban authorities themselves.

The proximity of Lazo to figures such as the troubadour Israel Rojas, leader of the duo Buena Fe, or Gerardo Hernández Nordelo, a spy convicted in the United States and current coordinator of the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR), has strengthened his image as an unofficial spokesperson and lobbyist for the dictatorship, more interested in bolstering the narrative of Havana than in denouncing the repression and misery endured by the Cuban people.

His return to institutional favor, after months of apparent disillusionment, confirms the political ups and downs that characterize his relationship with the regime: a cycle of minor tensions followed by strategic reconciliations, in which 'Puentes de Amor' serves both as official propaganda and to sanitize the humanitarian image of a system that continues to block internal aid and punish dissent.