A group of Cubans gathered this Friday outside the headquarters of the Spanish party Podemos in Madrid to denounce what they consider to be the complicity of this political organization with the Cuban regime, amidst the controversy generated by the recent visit of the former leader of the organization, Pablo Iglesias, to Havana.
The action included a symbolic gesture aimed at the leftist party: the protesters left a package of cookies in front of the headquarters along with the message “Come out and dance with us, we brought cookies.”
The sentence refers to videos shared on social media where members of the so-called Convoy Nuestra América were handing out cookies to Cuban children while asking them to dance.
In the images of the protest, shared through the Facebook page of the platform Click Cuba, the Cuban activist Lázaro Mireles denounced that such initiatives exploit the precariousness experienced by the population on the island and reduce the country's crisis to propaganda acts.
During his speech, he stated that Cubans do not need symbolic gestures or ideological campaigns, but rather freedom.
Mireles also criticized what he described as an international narrative that seeks to justify the Cuban regime, while millions of citizens face food shortages, an economic crisis, and a sustained migration exodus over the decades.
The protest occurred in a context of growing discontent among Cubans both on and off the island due to the presence in Havana of foreign activists and politicians associated with the so-called Our America Convoy, an international initiative that promotes solidarity actions with the Cuban government and recently held meetings with the ruling Miguel Díaz-Canel.
The visits of these delegations have sparked controversy among sectors of the exile community and Cuban civil society, who believe that some of these initiatives end up portraying a distorted image of the country's reality.
The Cuban journalist Yoani Sánchez was unequivocal in declaring that Cuba is not a “theme park” for foreign visitors who come to defend the government, while the population is facing a deep economic and social crisis.
In the same vein, musicologist and historian Rosa Marquetti questioned what she termed the "folklorization of Cuban misery," warning that some acts of solidarity end up instrumentalizing the country's precariousness for ideological purposes.
Reactions also intensified after Iglesias downplayed the seriousness of the situation on the island during his stay in Havana, stating that the Cuban reality "is difficult but not as it is portrayed from the outside," remarks that sparked criticism from numerous Cubans on social media.
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