Arleen Rodríguez Derivet doesn't need lights: she is enough with the light that emanates from her own concept of self. Although sometimes, like this week, that light goes out along with the power, and she ends up adrift like a pirate ship.
José Martí never experienced electric light and was a genius; I wish I could write a line like Martí with the light on,” she said in an interview with Rafael Correa. The response from the Ecuadorian fugitive was a blink of disbelief: “But Arleen, we are in the 21st century.”
The scene lasted only a few seconds, but it was enough to showcase what Arleen has embodied for decades: the confusion and mediocrity of a state-run press that confuses propaganda with thought and faith with journalism.
His viral phrase about Martí —who also knew, wrote about, and celebrated electric light— was more than a historical slip; it was an involuntary psychological portrait.
Because Arleen, more than just informing, interprets herself. The guantanamera has a habit of turning every public appearance into a small personal epic.
In the interview: she preaches. She doesn't comment: she evangelizes. She has been constructed as a sentimental heroine of Castroism, a figure who always needs to be at the center of the story, in the spotlight of the cameras, or alongside power.
She herself has acknowledged it: “I have a big problem with wanting to be the center of attention wherever I go”.
In that confession lies the entirety of his career. From the days of Juventud Rebelde and Radio Rebelde to his current role as the voice of Mesa Redonda and the podcast 'Chapeando bajito', Rodríguez Derivet has made political servility a form of identity.
She is the spokesperson who defends the Internet cut because “the war against Cuba is being organized,” the one who justifies the blackouts by citing the Apostle, and the one who expresses gratitude on Twitter for the visit of the Monroe from La Colmenita with the phrase: “We all wanted to be Ana de Armas.”
That mix of adoration, envy, and the need for a mirror explains a large part of their public persona.
Arleen lives in a constant idealized identification with the powerful and the admired. She wants to write like Martí, be as beautiful and applauded as De Armas, and at the same time, continue to be the “soul sister” of Miguel Díaz-Canel, who referred to her as such in one of his ridiculous public congratulations.
In that sentence, her role in the ecosystem of the Cuban dictatorial power is summed up: the loyal priestess of the official narrative, the striking face of dullness and obedience.
Her life, as she herself stated in an interview for Al Mayadeen, aims to be a “permanent Operation Truth,” a sacred mission of service to the regime and the Paleolithic myth of Santa Ifigenia.
Arleen speaks of herself with a tone of being chosen, with the solemnity of someone who believes they are defending something greater than reality, be it the delirious reflections of the colostomy-ridden dictator, or the farcical heroism of five captured spies.
But behind that mystical rhetoric—of the "light of memory," of "revolutionary decency," and of the "new man"—lies a figure that is profoundly subordinate and dependent on power.
There is no distance or self-criticism, just a devotional faith. She is the lay nun of propaganda, always ready to justify the unjustifiable, even at the cost of excruciating ridicule.
It's a path where we still have to endure a little bit of blackouts, but we must hold on a bit longer, he said sweetly in front of Vicente de la O Levy who, in September 2024, promised to generate a minute of electricity from renewable sources in 2025... and "increase" it moving forward.
Her need to belong to the circle of power has led her to inhabit a kind of turbulent ideological sea, where she navigates with this compass rose: the point of Birán (the red dwarf of heliocentrism), the dark matter of Rosario (an eclipse of the moral world), the troubadour of San Antonio (comet Oumuamua), and the black hole of Placetas (heir and “respectable continuator”).
In that symbolic universe, Arleen floats between nostalgia and servitude, caught between gravitational fields of manuals and pamphlets, convinced that she is echoing the words of heroes and thinkers, when she is merely recycling slogans in emptiness.
And so, while the country sinks into chaos and darkness, Arleen continues to speak to her illusory brightness. She believes she sees in every blackout a metaphor for "creative resistance," and in every "improvised" leader, a new reflection (or erratum) of her faith.
In their world, truth is a dogma, not an endless pursuit; a word spoken from memory, even when everything around reeks of stagnation, silence, privilege, and clots of blood.
As a young rebellious veteran and his subordinate would say after having a couple of drinks: Arleen "think with the systole and diastole".
And so, singing the Guevarist chant of "integrity, honesty, and decency," Arleen moves as an organoponic intellectual, pondering amidst the contractions of tubers.
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