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Alexandro Pupo, a member of the Our America Convoy and the International Youth Organization for Ibero-America, urged Cuban youth to persevere through hardships and maintain hope in the government of Miguel Díaz-Canel amid the humanitarian crisis facing Cuba.
The visit to Havana by international activists highlights a recurring discourse among leftist militants worldwide: the appeal to the sacrifice of the Cuban people in the name of political causes that offer little relief to the harsh everyday reality on the island.
In statements made to the Cuban News Agency, activist Alexandro Pupo asserted that “it is very important to be in Cuba, alongside the Cuban youth,” whom he praised for their “courage and bravery” in the face of the crisis.
He expressed his rejection of U.S. sanctions and expressed support for those within the country who face daily hardships. His message did not go unnoticed as he extended an invitation to prolong the sacrifice of the Cuban people.
To the Cuban people, we say: keep holding on. From the outside, we continue to watch you with great hope,” Pupo noted.
The phrase reflects the disconnect between those who support the system from the outside and the reality of millions of Cubans who suffer from power outages, food shortages, and a sustained decline in their quality of life.
The discourse of resistance has been a constant for decades, promoted both by the regime and by sectors of the international left that see Cuba as an ideological symbol.
They are asking for "more endurance," and it doesn't seem to matter to them that for Cubans, this translates into surviving in increasingly precarious conditions, without structural solutions to the crisis, and in extreme poverty.
While some continue to defend the narrative of resistance, questions are growing about the extent to which it is legitimate to ask a people to continue enduring hardships in the name of ideals that, in practice, have been destroyed by the regime itself.
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