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The Cuba that once inspired social movements, idealistic youth, and leftist parties across Latin America no longer evokes passion, not even among those who once fervently defended it.
Today, the island evokes more discomfort than admiration, more questions than slogans. According to Chilean academic Iván Witker, researcher at the National Academy of Political and Strategic Studies (ANEPE) and professor at the Central University of Chile, this emotional rift has deep roots.
In a column published in El Líbero, Witker describes the process as “the inevitable laxity” of a faith that can no longer withstand reality, with a Cuba that is impoverished, sick, and immersed in a social deterioration that he characterizes as "the favelization of the entire country." For many of his former supporters, confronting that image is simply unsustainable.
Witker argues that the Cuban Revolution has turned into "an anachronistic ideology" unable to win hearts in the 21st century.
What was once presented as a model of social justice has turned into a country with 15-hour blackouts, an almost total shortage of drinking water, essential foods disappearing, and epidemics that once again threaten millions: “48,000 hospitalized for dengue and 700 daily cases of chikungunya,” reports the academic.
For him, the island resembles “a new Haiti”, with cities turned into vast slums and a system unable to provide even minimal responses.
"Defending, explaining, and justifying this new Haiti in democratic environments is impossible," he states.
The Discomfort of the New Lefts
The collapse of Cuba also represents a political issue for part of the Latin American left, which seeks to renew itself and distance itself from old dogmas.
Witker asserts that the island has become “an uncomfortable alliance,” a symbolic burden that is difficult to bear, a regime characterized by gerontocracy, lacking elite renewal, devoid of civil life, and without intermediate layers that provide oxygen to society.
The new left, he writes, "has been forced to nuance, to discover subtle arguments, to de-dramatize. But that is exhausting."
Another point where Witker is emphatic is the exhaustion of the argument of the blockade. The academic asserts that the embargo "does not explain the Cuban disaster," and recalls that the law allows purchases and does not prevent trade with other countries. The problem, he argues, is that Cuba does not produce anything exportable and has run out of real sources of foreign currency.
The sugar harvest “achieves barely one-tenth” of what was promised in 1970; no one is hiring Cuban medical services anymore; tourism has collapsed; and remittances are insufficient.
A fractured elite lacking symbolic support
This crisis is compounded by the mystery and internal tension among the leaders themselves. Witker focuses on the case of Alejandro Gil Fernández, the former Minister of Economy accused of corruption and identified as responsible for the economic collapse.
For the academic, the process does not aim for justice, but for a grim fate: “To end up before a firing squad.”
This image, he says, is incompatible with the current Latin American public opinion, even among those most inclined to sympathize with the island.
The result of this entire situation—economic collapse, epidemics, structural poverty, internal fractures, and loss of international relevance—is that Cuba has ceased to be the symbol it once was.
For Witker, the island "has long stopped winning hearts." Today, even its former defenders prefer to look the other way, soften their positions, or remain silent to avoid an ideological or moral fatigue that no one is willing to bear anymore.
The Cuban revolution, ultimately, became a myth eroded by its own reality.
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