The Cuban duo Buena Fe performed this Sunday at the Piña Colada Festival in Morón, Ciego de Ávila, and its leader Israel Rojas posted a video on Facebook where he praised solar panels as a symbol of "resilience" in the face of power outages.
The concert was part of the XXIII edition of the Festival, dedicated to the anniversaries of the Union of Young Communists and the José Martí Pioneer Organization, but Rojas did not mention a single word about the repression that shook the city just three weeks prior.
In the video, Rojas described the journey to the province and noted, "on the rooftops of the houses, resilience begins to emerge; you can start to see the landscape of solar panels as a way to have electricity."
The singer echoed the official discourse of the regime, which has presented the 5,000 photovoltaic systems donated by China —prioritizing state institutions over private homes— as a response to the electrical crisis.
What Rojas deliberately omitted was the context that makes this narrative particularly cynical: on March 13, after 26 consecutive hours of blackout, citizens of Morón took over the headquarters of the Communist Party, set fire to internal furniture, and a young man was shot.
Cubalex has documented at least 156 protests across Cuba as of March 17, the largest wave of demonstrations since July 11, 2021.
The subsequent repression led to the detention of at least two 16-year-old adolescents. Jonathan David Muir Burgos was arrested on March 16 along with his father while responding to a police summons.
The teenager, who is facing a sabotage charge, suffers from a dermatological condition without medical attention and sleeps on the floor of the Canaleta prison with little food.
The habeas corpus filed by his family was rejected by the Provincial Court of Ciego de Ávila.
Christian de Jesús Crespo Álvarez, also 16 years old, was arrested two days later after being identified in protest videos. His mother has only been able to visit him for ten minutes since the arrest.
While those minors remained imprisoned, Rojas wrote in his post: "Thank you, Morón. It was an incredible night," and concluded his video with the phrase "we will get through this together," making no reference at any point to the detainees or the repression.
It is not the first time that Rojas has acted as a spokesperson for the regime. The Foundation for Human Rights in Cuba included him in its list of repressors due to his past in the Ministry of Interior and his collaboration in Castroist propaganda.
In May 2023, he publicly denied the existence of political prisoners in Cuba: "As far as I know, there are none." In March of this year, a Cuban was forcibly removed from a Buena Fe concert in Madrid for shouting "Freedom for political prisoners."
The rapper El B posted a video denouncing the repression against minors in Cuba, from 12-year-old children in cells to, in his words, "children who are no longer here," in stark contrast to the festive tone that Rojas chose to document his visit to the same city where these events occurred.
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