It's just 14 seconds of video, in three consecutive shots and with audio in which a few words are spoken. However, it is enough to capture the tragedy.
“Look at this, man, look. Hey, yes, sir, this is Cuba, the year 2026. Come on, get comfortable. Cuba, the year 2026. 2026, folks. Come on, get comfortable, it’s all good,” can be heard from two young people in the clip uploaded to Facebook by a content creator who goes by Soy El Kielo. The text reads simply: "We’re almost like aborigines." Meanwhile, the camera angle focuses on a rustic wood-burning stove: 2 large rocks acting as a base, a few burning logs in the center, and on top a sooty grill where a pot, also charred with soot, is used to boil or fry some sliced sausages.
19th century? A village lost in the deepest jungle? The film set of a historical movie? I wish.
But the reality, which always surpasses fiction, is simpler and more painful. As the young filmmakers insist: "Cuba, 2026."
Blackouts, acknowledged even by the President of the country, lasting up to 30 and 40 hours, extraordinary shortages of food; transportation severely diminished… a bankrupt country where people, in order to survive day by day, must not only come up with strategies for getting around or cooking the few available foods, but also, to avoid succumbing to depression, mock and joke about their own conditions.
The hundreds of comments on the post highlight the widespread distress in the face of such life circumstances, in a nation that, on one hand, faces increased pressures from the U.S. Government, and on the other, cannot break free from a dictatorship that has brought it to the inhumane situation of the present.
Miguel Díaz-Canel, meanwhile, continues to commend the "creative resistance" of Cubans, expressing gratitude for the donations that arrive on the Island and maintaining that the political system is non-negotiable. Recently, he even referred to the urgency of ensuring that materials for cooking food are available in Havana, from charcoal to firewood, materials that the Cuban bureaucratic elite surely do not use in their homes.
People don't only cook with firewood. They also lose weight, get sick, emigrate, or die. Die.
And those who, in a moment of desperation, take to the streets, as happened in Morón, Ciego de Ávila, end up in the clutches of a repressive apparatus that indeed has the resources to monitor and punish.
"The achievements of the revolution," summarizes one forum member. Another emphasizes that the problem is not new, although it is currently at its extremes: "There are many people who were born this way and lived their whole lives, even into old age, in those same conditions."
"Until when?" many ask.
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