The ambassador of the Cuban regime in the Dominican Republic, Ángel Arzuaga Reyes, made an appearance this week with a familiar repertoire of what is known as "revolutionary diplomacy."
In a television interview conducted in Santo Domingo for the news program El Día, the diplomat denied the evidence of repression on the island, defended the existence of a single party (the Communist Party), and reinterpreted history to suit his agenda in order to justify the lack of political pluralism on the island.
Showing the typical cynicism of the chancellery led by Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla, the official claimed that in Cuba “no one is imprisoned for thinking” and that the country holds elections every five years, although —he clarified— without parties to “contest power,” because power, according to his statement, “belongs to the people.”
Moreover, he stated that multipartyism "did not yield results" in Cuba and that the current model has majority support.
The staging was not new, but it was revealing of the moment. The Dominican Republic has distanced itself from Havana in recent years and has aligned with U.S. policy toward the Caribbean.
In that context, the ambassador sought to project an image of institutional normalcy that contrasted with the reality documented by international bodies and independent organizations.
The assertion that no one is imprisoned in Cuba for their ideas clashes with a difficult reality to disguise: dozens of opponents, activists, and independent journalists have been prosecuted in recent years under criminal charges such as "contempt," "public disorder," "enemy propaganda," or "assault."
The official argument tends to be the same that the diplomat repeated when asked about the repression against the members of the El4tico project: thought is not punished, but rather crimes. The problem is that within the Cuban legal framework, expressing political dissent can, with notable interpretative elasticity, be classified as a crime.
By stating that there are elections in Cuba, the ambassador omitted an essential detail: there is no real political competition. The Communist Party of Cuba is the only legally recognized force, and the 2019 Constitution defines it as the "leading force of society and the State."
In that institutional design, alternation is not a possibility but a heresy. Presenting that scheme as equivalent to a plural democracy is, at the very least, a mendacious rhetorical exercise.
The official also defended the idea that multiparty systems have historically failed on the island and that, therefore, a single party is a proven solution.
The explanation, simplified to the extreme, reduced the complex republican history to a binary narrative in which everything prior to 1959 was disqualified without nuance. The fact that more than six decades later the political system still does not allow for the formation of alternative parties does not appear, in its logic, to be a democratic deficiency but rather a preventive virtue.
Invoking the popular validation of the 2019 Constitution as conclusive evidence of democratic pluralism requires a considerable act of faith; it was another one of the delirious moments left by his intervention.
The ambassador's tone oscillated between a repeated mantra and a categorical assertion, but he avoided delving into specific cases of political detentions. Rather than being convincing, the speech seemed rooted in formulas from another era.
In a regional context where several governments have taken a firmer stance against Havana, insisting that the one-party system is the highest expression of the popular will and that freedom of expression faces no substantive limits sounds less like a solid argument and more like an outdated diplomatic manual.
The paradox is evident: while the ambassador speaks of a system where the people exercise power without partisan intermediaries, that same people cannot organize politically outside the official structure.
The narrative may be repeated with dull discipline, but reality —increasingly visible both inside and outside the island— proves harder to fit into slogans.
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