Social media was flooded with ironic comments following the dissemination of images and videos from the so-called "Combat Preparation Competition" organized by the Western Army in the context of National Defense Day.
The scenes, shared by the official Castro accounts themselves, showed young people training to use obsolete weapons, participating in military exercises that many users deemed more of a spectacle than genuine military preparation.
The event took place at the Centro de Estudios Menelao Mora, in Artemisa, where infantry battalions from the military regions of Artemisa and Pinar del Río participated.
The aim was to "assess the level of training, discipline, cohesion, and ideological preparation" of the fighters. However, the graphic material published sparked a wave of mockery due to the visible precariousness in each scene.
In other images, young people are seen with old rifles, without protective gear, conducting drills under a scorching sun and in minimal material conditions.
Several internet users pointed out that the supposed "doctrine of the war of the entire people" has become a form of internal propaganda, disconnected from contemporary military reality.
"Exercise without helmets, museum rifles, and torn uniforms," summarized one of the comments on social media. The comparison with modern defense standards, especially with U.S. forces, highlights the symbolic nature of these activities, which are more focused on ideological control than on effective preparation.
The Cuban regime has been promoting the “war of the entire people” for decades as a defensive strategy based on mass civil mobilization in the face of an alleged foreign invasion.
However, in a country mired in poverty, with blackouts, hunger, and increasing military desertion, weekend exercises seem more like a scene from the past than a realistic maneuver.
While the government tries to showcase cohesion between the people and the Armed Forces, images of inexperienced youths wielding old weapons provoke the opposite effect: a mixture of compassion, indignation, and laughter in the face of evidence of a crumbling country that continues to march to the rhythm of empty slogans.
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