Miguel Díaz-Canel celebrated on social media this Friday the event "Youth Anti-Imperialist Parade 'Here, with Fidel'", held on Thursday in Havana, where students and young people mobilized by state structures rode through the streets on bicycles, scooters, and electric vehicles while carrying political slogans.
Yesterday I returned to my years as a youth leader, the leader wrote on his X account, reminiscing about his past as a member of the Union of Young Communists (UJC), an organization where he held leadership positions from 1989 to 1993 in Villa Clara and nationally.
The event, organized by the UJC and the José Martí Pioneer Organization (OPJM), traveled from the Havana Malecón along G Street to La Punta, in the Plaza de la Revolución municipality, and was broadcast live by the state newspaper Juventud Rebelde.
Díaz-Canel described the event as a demonstration that young Cubans proclaimed Cuba's choice to the world, and stated that the participants "denounced the criminal nature of the blockade" and "declared their love for life."
The first secretary of the UJC, Meyvis Estévez Echevarría, delivered the main speech of the event with the slogan: "We know we are the owners of a country that we build and defend every day."
Far from being spontaneous, the event is part of a systematic campaign for political mobilization surrounding the centenary of Fidel Castro's birth, scheduled for August 13, and the 64th anniversary of the UJC and the 65th anniversary of the OPJM, which are commemorated this Saturday, April 4.
Just days earlier, on March 31, children in Havana schools staged anti-imperialist tribunals against the United States in the presence of judicial officials, and on the same Thursday, preschoolers shouted slogans with Fidel, "socialism" and "militant" under the guidance of teachers.
The contrast between the official narrative and the reality of the country is striking: according to The Economist Intelligence Unit, the Cuban GDP will contract by 7.2% in 2026, accumulating a decline of 23% since 2019, while power outages reach 20-25 hours daily in many regions.
The energy crisis worsened in January 2026 with the cut in Venezuelan oil supply following the capture of Nicolás Maduro, and on March 16, the sixth total blackout of the National Electric System in a year and a half occurred.
While Díaz-Canel presents Cuban youths as enthusiastic defenders of the revolution, more than a million Cubans have left the island since 2021, the majority being young people between the ages of twenty and forty, the same group that the regime aims to portray as the cornerstone of the system.
In 2024, more than 250,000 Cubans emigrated, according to data from the National Office of Statistics and Information, a figure that contradicts the image of a youth committed to the political project that the leader nostalgically evoked from his years as a member of the UJC.
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