Amid prolonged blackouts, persistent shortages, and an economy bleeding in CUP while the government insists on discourse of resistance, the Cuban authorities decided to provide "clarity" to the national moment with a rhymed manifesto published by Cubadebate.
Under the grandiloquent title of “Manifesto,” three poets linked to the institutional cultural system —Waldo Leyva, Ricardo Riverón, and Jorge Ángel Hernández Pérez— dust off the epic of old to remind us that when answers are lacking, slogans abound.
The text, disseminated under the auspices of the Communist Party of Cuba, did not hold back on images of jungles, mambises, Turquino, the Andes, and revolutionary cataclysms.
There were also the "drones," "missiles," and the omnipresent "imperial claw," which has become an automatic literary device. The besieged rhetoric replaced any concrete analysis of the structural crisis facing the country. Instead of challenging power, poetry embraced it with discipline.
The signatories are not marginal figures in the cultural landscape. Leyva has held responsibilities within Cuban cultural institutions and has been an award-winning poet recognized by the system itself. Also with a career in official spaces and state publications, Riverón is part of the literary framework that orbits around the UNEAC and other cultural structures.
For his part, Hernández Pérez has engaged in roles related to state media and editorial projects. Therefore, these are not isolated voices, but rather recognized representatives of the intellectual community integrated into the state's cultural apparatus.
That detail is not insignificant. In contexts of political tension, those in power often call upon their most visible creators to produce texts of symbolic reaffirmation.
The manifesto precisely responds to that tradition: epic language, an omnipresent external enemy, and a ritual conclusion with the unquenchable “Homeland or Death! We will overcome!”. The slogan continues to function as a seal of ideological guarantee, even as a significant portion of the citizenry demands deep reforms, effective freedoms, and tangible solutions.
While thousands of Cubans face skyrocketing prices, collapsed services, and an expanding horizon of uncertainty daily, the manifesto calls for the "drums of the unjust war to thunder" and promises that "in this dust, the fascist will remain."
The simplifying dichotomy—heroic people versus absolute enemy—overrides any internal self-criticism. There is no mention of management errors, political responsibilities, or the need for structural changes. Only resistance and sacrifice.
The result is a piece infused with pamphleteering lyricism, seemingly crafted more for organic applause than for national dialogue. More than an autonomous literary exercise, the text reaffirms the relevance of the model of the "organic intellectual": one who, in critical moments, rallies support and legitimizes the official narrative.
In times that demand honesty, genuine debate, and real openness, the ruling party relies on trench rhetoric. Perhaps it is more comfortable to rhyme slogans with the myth of the so-called "revolution" than to address the demands of a civil society that today calls for change, solutions, dignity, freedom, and the right not to die from hunger and disease while listening to old elegies and empty epic metaphors broadcasted from the halls of power.
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