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After the wave of criticism regarding her absence from official tours following the passage of Hurricane Melissa, Lis Cuesta, the Cuban not-First Lady, was seen this Wednesday in Mayarí, Holguín, her home province, alongside her husband.
"From Education and Culture, we review today the recovery following Melissa in Mayarí. A beautiful school, teachers, and students that inspire hope," Cuesta wrote on X.
The former First Lady shared a photo alongside a group of students and teachers from a rural school, with her husband and the regime's Minister of Culture, Alpidio Alonso.
It was about the Rubén Martínez Villena primary school, located in constituency 82 of Cabonico, “where 61 children receive classes and have the basic resources for comprehensive learning,” according to the local government's Facebook page.
Aside from the photo on his X account, Cuesta is notably absent from the other images that have covered the government tour of a thermoelectric plant and the Levisa popular council.
"And where is the Holguin native Lis Cuesta?"
While eastern Cuba attempts to recover from the devastation caused by Hurricane Melissa, which has left thousands of families without shelter, food, and in a state of abandonment, Lis Cuesta Peraza, wife of the ruler Miguel Díaz-Canel, remained silent and took a month to appear in the province.
The so-called "not first lady" of the Cuban regime had not shown any signs of empathy towards the victims, limiting herself to sharing political propaganda messages about the U.S. embargo.
The contrast between that discourse and the reality faced by the victims has sparked criticism both within and outside of Cuba. Social media users are asking, “Where is Lis Cuesta from Holguín?” recalling that, despite being born in that province, she has not publicly appeared or expressed concrete solidarity with her people.
“She only shows up to pose at international events, luxury hotels, or cultural missions; when the people suffer, she disappears,” wrote the alternative media ‘La Tijera’, reflecting a widely shared sentiment.
This is not the first time Cuesta Peraza has provoked outrage due to its apparent disconnect from the suffering of the citizens.
In 2022, amid prolonged power outages, he wrote that he had “his heart in rag mode,” a phrase that became the subject of mockery and memes due to its lack of empathy. Since then, his image has been associated with the frivolity of power and the contrast between privilege and the misery that pervades the country.
In Holguín, the devastation is evident: collapsed houses, destroyed crops, and entire communities cut off. Meanwhile, the "first lady without a position" prefers to repeat the regime's slogans about the embargo rather than confront the tragedy affecting her own homeland.
The "not first lady" of silence and privilege
Díaz-Canel's wife has been rehearsing the role of "woman of power" for years in a dictatorship that doesn't even officially recognize the position of first lady.
She insists that this title is "bourgeois and patriarchal," yet she behaves accordingly every time she accompanies her husband on red carpets, at international banquets, or at Communist Party events, with escorts, designer dresses, jewels, and luxury accessories.
When tragedy knocks on the village's door, Cuesta Peraza disappears. There are no tears, no comfort, no human gesture. Their activism on social media is limited to applauding slogans about the "genocidal blockade," while ignoring blackouts, collapses, and children without medication.
Instead of empathy, he delivers empty speeches of "resistance" and phrases that border on the ridiculous, like the one from 2022 in which he claimed to have "a heart in scrub sponge mode" while millions of Cubans were cooking with firewood and sleeping under stifling heat due to the lack of electricity.
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